Last winter, Mercedes Vigil felt a little nervous as she traveled from her home in Albuquerque, N.M., to Leesburg, Va. For the next week, she’d be attending the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Principles of Elephant Management I classes. Although she’d been working at ABQ BioPark Zoo in Albuquerque, N.M., as an elephant keeper for a few years, this would be her first formal classroom training about elephants, and she knew there was a lot to learn. 

“I was just scared that I didn’t have as much knowledge as other people, but I was really excited and ready to get as much out of this experience as I could,” said Vigil. 

For six days, she sat in a classroom along with about 70 classmates—and one inflatable elephant—learning about elephant health and husbandry, what equipment to use in an emergency, herd management tips, whole life planning for elephants, and so much more. Along the way, she loved connecting with the instructors and classmates, many of whom she’s kept in touch with. 

“We got to know each other’s herds and facilities over lunch and dinner. You’re with these people pretty much all day and night, so you learn a lot of really cool stuff,” said Vigil. 

When the class ended, Vigil went home buzzing with new ideas and felt more connected than ever to the AZA elephant community. 

Teaching to the Standards

Elephants are intelligent animals with complex physical and social needs. They’re also a high-profile animal that can draw emotion and scrutiny, sometimes from extremist groups. AZA maintains a set of standards for their management in order to meet elephants’ needs and provide optimal care, and all accredited institutions must achieve those standards. The Principles of Elephant Management courses teach them how. 

“The goal is to ensure there’s a consistent understanding of the accreditation standards and expectations for elephant care, and that we are being consistent across the field in how elephants are cared for,” said Kari Hart, AZA’s director of professional development and education.

Principles of Elephant Management I, which Vigil took, is a multi-day classroom-based course that all elephant care professionals, including keepers, managers, and directors at institutions keeping elephants must attend to meet AZA accreditation standards. Principles of Elephant Management II is a hands-on, multi-day course that takes place on-site at a zoo interacting with elephants. Elephant managers and others in elephant care leadership roles must take it as a requirement of accreditation. 

The courses, which date back to the 1990s, highlight the most up-to-date research about elephants and their care. 

“We’re continually updating and revising the content to ensure alignment with the AZA accreditation standards, AZA standards for elephant management and care, and the AZA elephant strategy,” said Sharon Joseph, who is AZA’s elephant strategy manager, as well as a course instructor and a professional consultant. The continual updating is crucial because the stakes are high: AZA institutions are expected to provide the best possible care for elephants.  

Helping Elephants Thrive

From birth and calf management to geriatric care and beyond for Asian and African elephants, the Principles of Elephant Management courses cover it all. One important—and popular—topic discussed in Principles of Elephant Management I is elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV), which is an enormous threat to elephant sustainability, with a 65 percent mortality rate. The virus impacts baby elephants, but instructor Jennifer D’Agostino, who is a veterinarian and serves as chief animal program officer at Oklahoma City Zoo in Oklahoma City, Okla., explains to students that this is a topic that’s critical to any zoos that manages elephants, regardless of age. 

“If we can’t figure out how to stop babies from contracting the fatal elephant herpesvirus disease, then we may not have elephants in human care in 100 years,” said D’Agostino. She shares with students that her home institution lost a four-year-old calf, named Malee, to the elephant herpesvirus. The tragedy led Oklahoma City Zoo to create its own PCR lab in 2017 to conduct weekly testing, and it remains at the forefront when it comes to preparedness. “It stimulates really good conversation among the students, and they get excited about finding ways to help fight the disease,” she says. 

The behaviors elephants must be trained to do—and why those behaviors are so important— is a common thread weaving through the courses. 

“Elephants need to really participate voluntarily with everything you want to do in order for them to be cared for properly,” said Mike McClure, who’s a course administrator and instructor with more than three decades of experiences working with elephants and in zoos. “Imagine if you have an elephant that doesn’t feel well and it’s standing over on the other side of the habitat and won’t come anywhere near you. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge you have. If you can’t get that elephant to be close to you, there’s little you can do.” 

He adds that it takes relationship-building, training, and positive interaction to help the animals feel safe and comfortable in your presence, and those are discussed in great detail in Principles of Elephant Management I and II.   

The behaviors also connect back to health care, a topic that D’Agostino covers in depth. For example, an elephant must be able to raise their feet to allow for a voluntary X-ray; they must be able to open their eyes and mouth for exams; they must be trained to accept injections; they need to be able to turn their bodies and lay down when asked in order to be examined; they need to be able to walk away from their herd mates so a veterinarian can look at them in isolation. 

“All of these behaviors are critical for us to be able to do our job,” said D’Agostino. Yet, she said, people who work with elephants don’t always understand the “why” behind the behaviors. These courses help make that association. “We see some light bulbs go on when they realize these are not just random behaviors, but they have a very specific and very important purpose in keeping elephants healthy,” said D’Agostino. “We tell them that if the elephants can’t do these things, we can’t give them routine health care.”   

Sharing Elephant Expertise

Instructors for the annual courses are all immersed in different aspects of elephant care, either at their own facilities or via contract work. Hart said most are members of the Elephant Strategy Task Force and bring with them decades of experience. 

“They’re very plugged into the elephant community,” said Hart. 

They also genuinely love elephants. When they teach the courses, they do it as a team, bouncing around to share anecdotes and experiences from their own colorful histories of working with the species. That approach was inspired by student feedback and is designed to keep the energy high and students engaged.   

Joseph, who has been working with elephants since the 1990s, took Principles of Elephants I herself in 2004, when she was overseeing the elephant department at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Bay Lake, Fla. She loved it so much she became an instructor the next year. She views her teaching role as an opportunity to help facilities meet AZA standards required for accreditation and to educate the next generation of people working with elephants. 

“We have a very heavy responsibility to help new keepers get the right information so they can best manage their elephants and provide optimal care for them,” said Joseph, who also works as an AZA accreditation inspector. 

When someone cares for an elephant, after all, they are building a relationship with an animal that is capable of picking up on people’s moods—and has a long memory. Because of an elephant’s size, strength, and intelligence, it’s important to build trust and understanding, said D’Agostino, who helps provide care for a multigenerational herd at Oklahoma City Zoo, and has attended multiple births. 

And McClure, who is a zoo service provider for nearly 20 zoos through his business, McClure International Consulting, likes to remind students that they will still be students long after they leave the classroom because they will continue to learn from the elephants themselves. 

“When you start working with these animals, you don’t know what it takes to really care for them well,” said McClure. “And their patience and tolerance of you as you enter their world and start trying to figure them out is incredible to me.” 

Even after decades of working with elephants, McClure admits he still has a lot to learn. 

“It’s the one species that I have worked with in my career that I have more questions about today than I did when I started,” said McClure. 

He likes sharing a quote with students that he learned from one of his own mentors: “Elephants are a school that you never graduate from.”

Making Lasting Connections 

If working within a zoo is a specialized career, then working with a particular species within a zoo is even more rare. Getting the opportunity to spend time with others who have so much in common is something students—and even instructors—appreciate the most about these courses. McClure said it’s been 20 years since he was a student taking the Principles of Elephant Management course, and the connections he made live on. 

“I still have contact with some of the people that were in my class,” said McClure. “Some of them have gone on to be elephant managers, some are still keepers, some have moved into curator jobs. It’s really given me a baseline network that I could always go back to, and it creates a nice sense of community for people.” 

It’s also gratifying when former students connect real-life situations to what they’ve learned. McClure remembers an exercise from Principles of Elephant Management II that saved the day. In class, students are tasked with using a tether system to guide an elephant from one area to another using teamwork, positive reinforcement training, and technical rope techniques. Long after class ended, an elephant manager put that lesson to use with her team back home when an elephant was dazed and couldn’t find her way into the barn. 

“It was just great to see that this class set that team and the elephant up to be successfully managed so they could overcome that challenge,” said McClure. “As instructors, we’re able to share experiences and techniques to prepare people. And to hear that it helped was so validating.”

Photos Credit: © Sedgwick County Zoo

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