In the early 1980s, when Kenya the African elephant was four years old, she was transferred from a zoo in Germany to the Mendoza Zoo in Argentina. For the next 40 years, she lived alone in a dusty, barren enclosure, her only companion being a painting of an elephant on the surrounding cement wall.
Argentina began closing its zoos in 2016, and Kenya was the last surviving elephant in the country. The zoo, now renamed Mendoza Ecoparque, agreed to send her to the Global Sanctuary for Elephants expansive natural habitat sanctuary in Brazil (Elephant Sanctuary Brazil.)
When she arrived at the sanctuary, her health was, by any standards, severely compromised. As founder and director of the sanctuary Scott Blais described it:
“All four of her feet had severely overgrown nails, pads, and cuticles, and she had osteomyelitis (diagnosed through radiographs), which can be fatal in elephants (and in humans is usually treated with amputation). She was also coated with thick layers of dead skin, which had accumulated over years due to lack of a proper bath or anything to rub against to exfoliate.”
Although she was responding well to her treatments, Kenya became ill at the end of 2025, had trouble breathing, and a few days later, on January 7th, she died. A full necropsy is being conducted, but preliminary reports, shared with a large animal vet, point to tuberculosis that was very progressed, with granular infiltrates throughout both lungs as well as alveolar collapse. These were chronic issues that she must have been living with for considerable time before coming to the sanctuary.
Elephant Sanctuary Brazil is a 2,800-acre natural property in Brazil, currently home to five elephants rescued from zoos and circuses in South America. They have room to roam, are fed and cared for by expert veterinarians, and can regain their mental and physical health after years of neglect and abuse. With the exception of Guillermina, who is 27, all are older animals, and all over 58 years old. None of them arrive in good health. But they get to live out their lives in a natural environment that, along with the expert care they receive, plays a large part in the healing process.
From this:
Kenya at the Mendoza Zoo
. . . to this:
Kenya at the Elephant Sanctuary Brazil
And watch her taking a refreshing mud bath at the sanctuary:
Sanctuary as hospice
Part of the role of any sanctuary is to provide hospice care to older animals who have spent most or all of their lives in captivity. Another elephant, Pupy, who had suffered from morbid obesity at the Buenos Aires Zoo before being transferred to the Global Sanctuary for Elephants in Brazil in April 2025, also passed away recently. Her preliminary necropsy, too, revealed a seriously immunocompromised body.
We mourn these deaths, but we understand that their time at a sanctuary, long or short, is a blessing to be treasured, one that helps make up for whatever went before.
But in the wake of Kenya’s death, the anti-sanctuary machine has rolled into action, exploiting her death as “evidence” to promote false claims that the sanctuary is incapable of caring for its residents and, as Scott Blais wrote to me in an email, is killing them. He added:
“Suggesting that the sanctuary causes the deaths of elephants who arrived in compromised health after decades in zoos is as absurd as blaming an elderly care facility for a loved one passing in their 80s, after they were sent there for end-of-life care.”
Nonetheless, a complaint has been filed against the sanctuary, and Scott notes that one of the groups reportedly involved in filing the complaint is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums of Brazil (AZAB), a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), a trade organization for zoos and aquariums. The industry’s false narratives have led to the temporary suspension of the sanctuary’s license to accept new residents until the matter is resolved.
A campaign to sow doubt and mistrust
Developments like these are calculated to sow doubt among those who support wild animal sanctuaries. And those of us who are establishing these sanctuaries are being subjected to increasingly vociferous and aggressive tactics by the corporations that own the parks, the trade associations, the scientists whose livelihoods are supported by the industry, and other groups that are opposed to ethical societal change.
Part of the role of any sanctuary is to provide hospice care to older animals who have spent most or all of their lives in captivity.Here at the Whale Sanctuary Project, we, too, are subject to similar tactics by the anti-sanctuary machine. Most recently, upon learning that the French government intended to work with the Whale Sanctuary Project to bring the two surviving orcas at Marineland Antibes to sanctuary in Nova Scotia, the European Association for Aquatic Mammals (a pro-captivity organization) released a statement claiming that animal protection organizations are involved in “misinformation, emotional manipulation and coercive lobbying,” calling them “amateur, self‑proclaimed experts.”
In another example, scientists who are considered to be allies of the captivity industry went far beyond the standard peer-review process in trying to block publication of a fully peer-reviewed scientific paper that documents how, even in fully accredited facilities, serious welfare challenges persist for captive cetaceans, especially for orcas and belugas. Other opponents of the growing movement to retire whales and dolphins to sanctuary have resorted to spreading rumors and fake stories on social media. (I personally have encountered the ludicrous claim that, as president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, I am getting so wealthy from my work that I have two – count them! – apartments in Paris.)
Stay the Course
While efforts like these to discredit the sanctuary movement are certainly destructive to the cause, they also indicate that pro-captivity advocates are becoming increasingly desperate. Public opinion is less and less supportive of the exploitation of whales, dolphins, elephants, great apes and other wild animals. The industry is seeing the proverbial “writing on the wall,” and its recourse is increasingly to go low and to go negative.
As a new ethic of respect and compassion takes hold, the Global Sanctuary for Elephants is creating and promoting a model of how to care for elephants who are rescued from life in a small and impoverished enclosure of a zoo. Please visit their website and their social media, learn about their work, and support their cause.
And while we navigate this opposition, we must remember that it means we are, in the long run, winning. And we are in good company. We have seen the same aggressive tactics with regards to slavery, civil rights, women’s suffrage, gay rights…and so on. There is always resistance to such change. But we will stay the course because the only priority is the health, well-being and dignity of our fellow animals.
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