Asian Elephant Studbook - AZA Elephant TAG/SSP Homepage

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NORTH AMERICAN REGIONAL STUDBOOK - ASIAN ELEPHANT iii
MESSAGE FROM THE STUDBOOK KEEPER
As a complete studbook, information is included on Asian elephants that we were able to
document as existing at one point in time in North America. This edition includes
information on 725 elephants, 78 more than the last edition which was published in 2007. 13
of these animals were captive born. The remaining 65 additional elephants were added
because we received historical animal records that validated their existence. Of the 725
elephants in the Studbook, 269 (53.216) are living and 145 (31.114) are currently housed in
AZA facilities.
The “Lost To Follow Up” section lists 9 male and 60 female elephants whose current
location is unknown to us. The “Undocumented” section lists 31 male and 203 female
elephants that we believe are individuals who existed in North America at one time,
however, we lack any official supporting documentation to give them official studbook
numbers. There is a chance that some of these elephants already have studbook numbers
under different house names, it is also likely that some of the undocumented elephants are
duplicates of one another. It is important that we have appropriate supporting documentation
to avoid assigning more than one studbook number to the same elephant. In our continuing
efforts to validate all of the undocumented elephants, we would like to solicit your help by
requesting that you review both of these sections and provide us with any information that
might help us locate the elephants that have been lost to follow up, validate the
undocumented elephants, or lead us to someone who might be able to provide this
information.
A majority of the work associated with publishing this Studbook was performed by Karen
Lewis and Katelyn Dever. Karen serves the Oregon Zoo as our Conservation Research
Associate and Katelyn is one of our Research Assistants. They surveyed facilities and
compiled the information used in this publication. They have done most of the data
validation in addition to making contacts with many of you who have contributed animal
information to the Studbook. Our future efforts will be to continue to validate historical
information and we will be contacting many of you to assist us with that effort.
We have also recorded individual reproductive information into each animal’s studbook file
as well as passed the information on to Janine Brown, Reproductive Advisor to the Elephant
TAG/SSP. Dr. Brown has done considerable work with female reproductive cyclicity and
anomalies. She extends her gratitude to all of you who provide the requested information.
We plan to continue to compile this information in an ongoing effort to establish the
complete reproductive life-cycle of elephants.
Special thanks for all of you who have been responsive to our requests for information and
for responding to our surveys. We could not have accomplished this publication without
your efforts.