#elephant conservation

https://www.fortworthzoo.org/naming-contest

Meet Baby

The Fort Worth Zoo is thrilled to announce the birth of a healthy, 36-inch-tall, 250-pound female Asian elephant calf, born at 3:36 a.m. on 18 August 2025.

This bundle of joy was born to mom, Bluebonnet, who was the first elephant calf born in the history of the Zoo in 1998.

The calf’s father is Romeo, making this calf a full sibling to almost 4-year-old brother, Brazos.

Mimicking herd dynamics in the wild, the newest calf joins a four-generation family of Fort Worth elephants, making our matriarch Rasha one of only a few great-grandmother Asian elephants in North America.

The calf was standing within six minutes of birth, nursing within two hours and maneuvering her trunk well almost immediately, all indications of a healthy baby elephant.

Bluebonnet, now 26 years old, was carefully monitored throughout her pregnancy.

As part of her prenatal care, she had weekly blood tests to monitor progesterone levels, regular physical examinations and sonograms.

Veterinary staff and animal staff were on-site to ensure a healthy birth. 

Both mother and baby have been quietly bonding behind the scenes since the calf’s birth in August.

This early bonding is crucial for the calf’s healthy development and the mother-baby bond. During this time, it has also been important for her to become familiar with her surroundings before making a public debut.

This includes learning to swim and spending time around other members of the herd. After successful introductions, the Zoo is thrilled to announce that the little one is now on-habitat in Elephant Springs for all to see!

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In 1998, the Fort Worth Zoo welcomed its first Asian elephant calf, Bluebonnet, and established the International Elephant Foundation (IEF), a global organization dedicated to elephant conservation, solidifying the Zoo’s commitment to the care and conservation of Asian elephants.

Elephant Springs, the state-of-the-art Asian elephant habitat, which opened in 2021, was designed to support a growing herd with features like multiple green spaces, a variety of substrates, a multitude of watering holes, and a spacious barn.

Following a total of six successful elephant calf births and continued involvement in IEF, the Zoo remains an international leader in elephant breeding and conservation.

“Asian elephants are endangered, with an estimated less than 40,000 individuals remaining in the wild, compared to hundreds of thousands of their African counterparts,” said Ramona Bass, chairman of the Fort Worth Zoo Board of Directors.

“Recognizing that both species face growing threats and declining populations, we have been specifically committed to the conservation of Asian elephants since 1998 through our dedicated breeding program here in Fort Worth, while contributing to global efforts to protect elephants in the wild through IEF.”

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Greetings, wildlife enthusiasts!

Feast your eyes on this ethereal illustration capturing the quintessence of the majestic African elephant. Here, we see the towering matriarch guiding her calf through the sun-dappled savannah with a grace that belies her immense size. The maternal bond is almost palpable, woven with threads of wisdom and care, and radiating an aura of ancient nobility.

Notice how the artist has meticulously depicted the delicate contours and wrinkles on their expansive ears—a treasure trove of evolutionary secrets. Those ivory tusks, grand and formidable, are both a blessing and a burden in this contemporary dance of survival.

From the rhythmic cadence of their ponderous steps to the intricate markings on their skin that tell tales of a life lived under the vast African sky, this duo is a testament to resilience, strength, and the enduring spirit of nature.

This illustration is not just art; it’s a narrative, a symphony of life, shimmying silently across the canvas. Let it remind us of our duty to protect these gentle giants and their enigmatic world.

The amazing Craig and one of his bodyguards

How can honeybees reduce human/elephant conflict?

It turns out elephants really hate bees, even to the point of having a specific vocalization to warn other elephants that bees are nearby. Conservationists were able to take advantage of this natural reaction with the use of “bee fences”.

A bee fence is made up of many small honeybee hives surrounding a village or farm. These hives are connected by rope in such a way that, if an elephant tries to walk between the hives and pushes on the rope, the hives will swing and irritate the bees.

Bee fences have proven to be extremely useful at deterring elephants from entering human settlements or crop-raiding. This project also has the added bonus of providing local people with an additional source of food and income in the form of “elephant-friendly” honey.

The bee fence method has since been put to use in several other African countries, as well as countries with Asian elephants like Nepal and India.

Sometimes all it takes is a creative solution for humans and animals to share space more easily.

I can’t overstate how incredibly important the progress being made with research into a cure or vaccine for this really scary (and scarily common) virus is, not only for elephants in human care, but wild elephant populations as well. The Houston Zoo, through their partnership with Baylor College of Medicine, has made incredible progress: and as of two weeks ago, that work has saved the lives of three of their Asian elephant herd. If you follow the politics around elephants in zoos, you’ve likely heard about EEHV: if you care about conserving elephants or just really love them, it’s something worth knowing about.

EEHV is nasty virus in the herpes family (technically it’s a group of very similar herpes viruses, but they result in the same symptoms and are generally referred to as the same disease). All elephants carry multiple strains asymptomatically as adults, but - in what feels like the most unfair thing in the world - calves are the most at risk of getting really sick. If they’re exposed when they’re super little and still have antibodies from mom, they generally fight off the primary infection without symptoms and are fine - but if they get exposed later, at a couple years of age or more, the primary infection that results has something like a 66% fatality rate. EEHV is historically the single largest cause of death for elephants in North America. It’s a hemorrhagic virus, which means a full-blown active infection results in massive internal bleeding. EEHV is the disease that recently claimed the lives of African calves Nyah and Kalina in Indianapolis, as well as the six-year-old Asian elephant calf Lily at the Oregon Zoo. Elephants get the virus from other elephants, and not just in zoo settings, or even just in captivity: deadly infections have been documented in working elephants in range countries, as well wild herds in multiple locations. The really awful thing about EEHV is that it sneaks up on you. A really, really sick elephant with EEHV can look completely fine one day - playing, eating, moving like normal - and be dead from it in less than 24 hours. For a long time, we didn’t have the technology to test for the disease, and so zookeepers and vets had to rely on clinical signs like swelling and cold sore-like lesions on the tongue. By the time the disease has progressed to the point that those symptoms are visible, though, the elephant is incredible sick and survival is miraculous even with intensive treatment.

EEHV is such a huge problem for both captive and wild Asian elephants that in 2005 - ten years after the disease was identified - an advisory group was formed to facilitate collaboration and research around the globe. They’ve held an annual international conference in the United States for 19 years running to share research and discuss treatment, and similar conferences have been held in Asia since 2015 and Europe since 2016. Together, they’ve made incredible strides both in diagnostics and treatment, and there’s tentative hope that a vaccine may be on the horizon.

Zoos and other places that manage elephants are now able to detect the very beginnings of an EEHV infection through blood tests, and while that can’t prevent calves from getting sick it gives them a major chance to survive it. One of the most important behaviors a baby Asian elephant learns is a voluntary blood draw, because it’s now standard practice to check them for viral activity at least once a week. Some zoos do this work in house, while others (like Houston) collaborate with local colleges and labs. As soon as a young elephant shows any sign of potentially being sick, their keeper staff and veterinary team will swing into action: current treatment for EEHV involves administering fluids, plasma, and anti-viral medications. A caring for an elephant with an active EEHV infection is a round-the-clock job, but it’s worth it to see them pull through when we used to lose so many.

Before the disease was identified, the Houston Zoo lost a number of their calves to EEHV; thanks to the world-wide collaborative research into the virus and the heroic efforts of their zookeepers and veterinary staff, it’s been over a decade since their breeding herd has lost an elephant to the disease. Their most recent survivor is the adorable little girl featured in the article linked on this post: Joy, who will turn two in July. The day they got the blood results saying she might be sick - less than a week after the zoo hosted the 14th International EEHV Conference - she was splashing in the pool with her little sister, Tilly, like nothing was wrong. Rather than waiting to see behavioral indicators of sickness or clinical symptoms, her team immediately started providing supplemental fluids and anti-viral medications. They were right - she had EEHV. Because Joy had already been taught to voluntarily offer the behaviors she’d need to know for the zookeepers to care for her if she got sick, she had the best chance at survival possible. The Houston Zoo elephant team stayed with her to give her intensive care 24/7 for the next eight days, and she pulled through. As of April 19th, it was announced that Joy had recovered enough that she and her mother were able to rejoin the rest of the herd. At a meeting for the Elephant Taxon Advisory Group on April 17th, a representative from the Houston Zoo presenting on the newest knoweldge about EEHV to other elephant care professionals from around the country proudly add Joy to the list of elephants who’ve survived - thanks to to efforts of elephant managers, veterinarians, and researchers literally around the world.

Even with everything we’re able to do for them now, not all elephant calves will survive EEHV infections, even with early identification and the best possible treatment options. But we’re getting closer - and it’s zoos like Houston, and everyone who participates in the EEHV Advisory Group - that continue to get us closer to finding a potential cure. Being able to study elephants that have survived EEHV is crucial to figuring out how to formulate treatments or even a vaccine. It’s always a tragedy when calves die from this disease, especially if it’s at your local zoo - but know when it happens that the staff there are doing absolutely everything they can for those babies and using cutting edge research to try to save them. Someday, hopefully, we’ll be able to stop EEHV from hurting any calves in the future - both in human care and in the wild.

If you want to learn more about EEHV, you can check out the EEHV Information site (run by the advisory group) or the Smithsonian’s EEHV Laboratory page.  Here’s Joy (at right) and her little sister Tilly playing with the water inlet for their pool, from when I was lucky enough to visit them in January.