They wanted Hadari to be close so they could visit her and we respect that decision. Hadari is privately owned by a couple who have worked for the Zoo caring for elephants for many years. As such, we believe the best decision is to find permanent homes for our elephants. We recognize that the process of funding, renovating and expanding our elephant facilities may take more time than we predicted earlier in the year. At this point, we continue to examine several options. Housing all of these animals and providing them with the best possible care will take careful planning and funding. This expansion includes a larger herd of elephants including bull elephants. Additionally, we have studied our plans to create a larger African exhibit featuring rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lions, cheetahs, gorillas and much more. Since that time, we have extensively studied the work that will go into the existing elephant barn renovations. Our plan was to have Hadari (33), Rosie (44) and Sukari (31), all female African elephants, join Juno in Florida until all renovations were complete, and then move all four back to Nashville. The renovations will be extensive and extremely invasive making it necessary to move all elephants to other facilities.
This move marked the beginning of our plans to renovate our existing elephant barn to include state-of-the-art equipment and adhere to the latest standards of elephant management as outlined by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Juno, a 36-year old female African elephant was sent to The National Elephant Center in Fellsmere, Florida in April. The following blog, written in November 2015, is an update of what has transpired since April and our plans moving forward. In April 2015, Nashville Zoo announced plans to eventually grow our African elephant herd.