Sydney, March 08: An elephant calf has died during days of labour at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, where its mother was a part of a programme to breed endangered Asian elephants, officials said Monday.
The baby elephant presented in a position that experts had never seen before, meaning that “there was never any chance of a successful birth”, Taronga’s director Cameron Kerr said.
“The attending international expert doctor has confirmed that in the wild, such a labour would have been fatal for both mother and calf,” Kerr said.
“We’ve all been incredibly saddened by this outcome, but right now, our focus must be on caring for (the mother) Porntip and the rest of the herd.”
The calf would have been the second elephant conceived by artificial insemination in Australia after the birth in January of a female at Melbourne Zoo.
In July 2009 Taronga welcomed the first baby elephant ever born in Australia, a naturally conceived male.
“Although we all knew that first deliveries are successful in only 50 percent of elephant births, everyone at the zoo was hoping that our second birth would be successful,” said Kerr in a statement.
The dead elephant’s mother Porntip, who went into labour last week, is being monitored by the staff. Zoo staff said she was still fit and young and had reproductive years ahead of her.
But the event has dealt a blow to the breeding programme implemented by Australian zoos following the controversial importation of the elephants from Thailand in 2006 as part of a bid to help save the species.
As few as 33,000 endangered Asian elephants are thought to remain in Asia.
–Agencies