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Freedom and Friends
To enter the Elephant Sanctuary, you have to pass through a massive gate, part of the thick, cabled fencing that surrounds the perimeter. It’s the kind of fence that kept the dinosaurs locked inside Jurassic Park. Inside, small birds flit in the grass, and there’s an unusual stillness for a place that’s home to the world’s largest land animals.Travel farther down the almost impassable packed dirt that acts as a major boulevard, and the sanctuary continues to surprise. It’s a banquet table of subtropical landscaping. Lush forests of sweet gum trees and maples give way to brush that seamlessly becomes hilly terrain, then opens up to savanna-like plains. It’s a perfect spot for elephants. Surprising, since we’re in Hohenwald, Tennessee, and not Burma or Africa as it might seem.
The sanctuary was started in 1995 by Carol Buckley and Scott Blaise. The two former elephant trainers had seen enough abuse and neglect at circuses and zoos to inspire them to create a haven where elephants could live out their lives. The sanctuary would offer what Buckley considers the three staples for a happy elephant: freedom from dominance, room to roam and lots of other elephants.
At the 2,700-acre preserve, the 19 African and Asian elephants in residence are allowed to exist as they would in the wild. Elephants in zoos and circuses are typically moved with a tool called an ankus, a nasty-looking wooden shaft with a metal hook protruding from the top. It’s banned at the sanctuary.
Instead, “we created a system where dominance does not exist at all,” says Buckley. “We give them the option to say no.”
Our photographer saw this firsthand. Buckley and Blaise would not bring us to the elephants, nor would they scatter hay in order to draw them out. Instead they gave the elephants the option to come to us. Luckily, two elephants, Shirley and Bunny, eventually did appear. And in a sweetly affectionate gesture, they even held trunks.
Yes, Buckley confirms, just as we’ve read in National Geographic and seen on the Discovery Channel, elephants show great compassion toward one another. Because the elephants she works with have suffered neglect and abuse, Buckley sees this empathy demonstrated in some unforgettable scenes, including this remarkable story.
A circus refugee, Jenny had often been tied up for 23 hours a day or crammed into small train cars traveling from one city to the next. After suffering a crippling leg injury, she was dumped at a dog-and-cat shelter, which was ill-equipped to care for an elephant, let alone an ailing one. An animal rights activist contacted Buckley, who brought Jenny to Hohenwald.
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