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In October 2017, an article was written in newspaper Sydney Morning Herald about the death of Asian Elephant Bong Su at Melbourne Zoo. It was euthanised after years of chronic foot and joint issues caused by circling and swaying behaviours on concrete surfaces within it's enclosure. I sent emails enquiring of the zoos in Australia their Elephant enclosure sizes in square metres. None responded other than one to say it was not-for-profit and not able to provide the information.

Enter MapInfo where I was able to add polygons to cosmetic layer over bing hybrid background to trace elephant enclosure sizes based on easily downloadable maps (settled on zoom window width of 2.602km).

Using newspaper articles, zoo websites and enthusiast forums I was able to identify the type and gender of the Australian zoo elephant population to give the reader an indication of how many of these animals and in what confines we are continuing to keep captive. I love a zoo (zoo maps especially) as do my kids but the time for elephants and other long-range travellers standing for our benefit is long past. #elephantsoutofzoosSee Attachment

Hi Ian,

Thank you for posting! Nice Maps on Elephants in Australia !

Ian,

Nice map and nice investigative reporting. Are you sharing this with any news organisations?

I really like that you put a football pitch as a reference. That really makes it easy to understand.

Tom

Yes, I'd love to give this issue some prominence through media exposure - in the first instance I will add it to the comments of the original article. That article made reference to night-time sheds as well. Perhaps I could have filled the bottom left with some context of daytime/night-time housing methods (or removed Tasmania from the Australian map to remove white space - but people hate that!).

There's definitely some more work to find the private zoos housing elephants and there's an interesting shift where long-time circus animals are being donated to zoos as traditional circus entertainment by animals is being shunned (at least in progressive Inner Melbourne where I live).

also - thanks for the comment re: football field comparison. I recall the 'olympic size swimming pool' being the international source of comparison (or am I perhaps thinking in terms of number of litres of beer served at an event!)