DENVER — Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo have lived in Colorado Springs for decades in the elephant exhibit at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Now an animal rights group is trying to free the elephants from what they say is essentially a prison for such highly intelligent and social animals known to roam in the wild for miles a day.
Colorado’s highest court will hear arguments Thursday on whether the older female African elephants should have legal standing to challenge their captivity under a lengthy lawsuit used by prisoners to challenge their detention. Animal rights group NonHuman Rights Project says the animals are languishing while “unlawfully confined” at the zoo, and wants them released to an unspecified elephant sanctuary.
“They suffer enormously and unnecessarily. Without judicial intervention, they are doomed to suffer day after day, year after year, for the rest of their lives,” an attorney for the group, Jake Davis, said in a letter submitted to the Colorado Supreme Court in May.
The main legal issue is whether or not the elephants are considered persons under the law and can therefore file a habeas corpus petition to challenge their detention. The NonHuman Rights project argues that legal personality is not limited to humans.
The lawsuit is similar to the failed lawsuit the group filed in 2022 against the confinement of an elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that Happy, while being intelligent and deserving of compassioncannot be considered as a person who has been illegally detained and who has the opportunity to apply for release.
The New York ruling said giving such rights to an elephant would have “a hugely destabilizing impact on modern society” and change the way people interact with animals.
The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo says moving the elephants and potentially placing them with new animals would be cruel at their age, potentially causing them unnecessary stress. It says that they are not used to living in larger herds and that based on their experience they do not have the skills or desire to join them.
In a statement ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the zoo claimed that the NonHuman Rights Project is not concerned about the elephants, but is merely trying to set a legal precedent by which the captivity of any animal can be challenged.
“We hope that Colorado is not the place that starts the slippery slope on whether your beloved and well-cared for dog or cat should have habeas corpus and ‘release’ depending on someone else’s opinion of them ” it said.
