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🎙️ Two New Elephants Arrive at Busch Gardens, Moved in Summer Heat
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay has taken in two elephants from the Cincinnati Zoo: Schottzie, who turns 51 this December, and Jati, roughly 40. The move covered nearly 900 miles in the late summer heat.
We'd known this was coming — our reporting had it pegged for the end of the year — but the timing caught us off guard. Elephants overheat easily in a transport truck, and this transfer happened in midsummer, not after the heat broke.
The elephant habitat remains unchanged, boxed in by roller coasters and regular close-range fireworks, where Rosie and Carina lived and died. Rosie went down during a fireworks show in 2022 and couldn't get back up for more than five hours; she never fully recovered and was euthanized two years later. Carina collapsed repeatedly this summer before she was put down. This team hasn't shown it can handle an elephant emergency, and age makes emergencies more likely, not less.
Schottzie and Jati are now two more elephants who will need exactly that kind of care as they get older. Karnaudi, the current resident closest in age to the newcomers, is compatible with only one other elephant on-site, who has been declining for years — so two more aging elephants don't solve that problem; they deepen it.
More than 74,000 emails had already been sent to the AZA, asking them not to let Busch Gardens grow this herd. The AZA let it happen anyway.
If you have a few minutes: comment on Busch Gardens' and the AZA's Instagram posts, leave a Google review if you've visited the park, and sign (or re-sign) the letters to both organizations.
Oh, and all donations made to our campaign through chilli.app (link below) will be matched up to $2,000!
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