Word: libera
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Earlier this year, Libera and FAADA mounted a campaign to encourage the Barcelona city government, which oversees the zoo, to transfer Susi to a safari-type institution where she would have more space and would be able to join a herd. But their efforts received little notice until they let it be known that both José Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist, and Sofia, Queen of Spain, had interceded on Susi's behalf. For her part, the Queen, who has long championed animal rights and is herself a vegetarian, forwarded the organizations' letter to the city government, urging...
...years, Susi shared her space at the zoo with another African elephant, a few years her senior, named Alicia. When Alicia died in February 2008, the loss came as a blow, according to the animal-welfare organizations Libera and the Foundation for the Adoption, Sponsorship and Defense of Animals (FAADA). "She's living in 1,000 square meters of concrete, which are not proper conditions for an elephant," says Alejandra Garcia, spokesperson for the Free Susi campaign. "But as long as she had Alicia she was more or less O.K. Now, though, she's apathetic, her trunk hangs...
...pawn in a larger war? Or is she really depressed? "If she's really eating excrement, if she's displaying rocking behavior, that would be abnormal for an adult elephant in the wild," says Dr. Joyce Poole, director of the conservation group Elephant Voices. At the behest of Libera and FAADA, Poole plans to travel to Barcelona to examine Susi's behavior for herself. But based on her studies of elephants in Africa, she admits to a certain bias. "Personally, I don't think we should have elephants in city zoos," Poole says. "Elephants in the wild are active...
SHARON E. LIBERA...