The following is a letter I wrote today to the Seattle City Council Members. If these thoughts resonate positively with you, then, please, do share them.
These elephants reside in a sanctuary in Thailand, not unlike the sanctuary in Tennessee.
This could be Seattle’s Chai, Bamboo, and Watoto. It’s up to all of us.
Make a difference.
Dear Council Members of the Great City of Seattle,
What is going on? How can it possibly take so long for such a progressive city to act upon an issue the current status of which bears no positive benefit to the three elephants held at Woodland Park Zoo nor to the 635,000 citizens of the city, most of whom, if you asked, would be happy to retire the elephants to a sanctuary.
For the elephants themselves, it would mean being in a place, at last, that resembles something somewhat close to what lies within their genetic blueprint and etched into the fabric of their social memory. None of you really need the opinions of the Zoo’s Board of Directors nor of their selected experts they depend upon to maintain this sad state of affairs. And you shouldn’t really need letters like mine. You need only search for and act upon your own ethical morality and awareness. It is cruel to keep animals in captivity for human entertainment and especially cruel to those large sentient creatures forced to suffer such pitiful confinement. Doing so, or doing nothing, supports the ongoing diminishment of what makes us human, and reasonable, and responsible for our actions in this world.
Please, each of you, do what you can to get this right.
Thank you,
Galen Garwood
