Elephant orphan quarantined on Niue till June

Transcript

Auckland Zoo says Niueans and tourists to Niue will soon be able to visit an elephant currently quarantined on the island.

Eight-year old Anjalee travelled from an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka on a chartered commercial airline to Auckland where she was loaded onto an Air Force Hercules for Niue.

The Zoo's Head of Life Sciences, Kevin Buley, told Jenny Meyer he was with her for the whole journey which she coped very well with and she's now sleeping and eating in her purpose built compound on Niue adjusting to her new environment.

He says the Niuean public will be able to meet the elephant from next week until she leaves again for Auckland to join the older pachyderm Burma in June.

KEVIN BULEY: The six months of quarantine that she's undergone have basically guaranteed that she's not carrying any diseases of concern. However it's a legal requirement of MPI here in New Zealand that she'll need to be quarantined in a third country against foot and mouth disease and it's primarily to protect New Zealand's agricultural export industry which is worth many millions of dollars. So there's no actual risk, but it's a legal requirement for her to be quarantined elsewhere against foot and mouth disease. Now Niue's an ideal location in that sense because one, there's one there is no risk of foot and mouth, but two, Niue does not have an agricultural export industry so the risk of any effect there is negligible.

JENNY MEYER: So for you what do you think has been the most rewarding aspect of this whole journey so far with the new elephant?

KB: It's been an incredibly long journey which started long before Kashin died. To get to this point now, we have an elephant secure in Niue, the people in Niue can enjoy her for three months and then we can bring her to the zoo and start to really establish the elephant family here at the zoo that we've wanted to do for so long. The fact that we're now a long way down hat path is incredibly rewarding and we know that that's what the people of Auckland want, it's the best thing for Burma here at the zoo and we'll be able to provide a life for Anjalee that's really better than she was ever going to be able to experience in Sri Lanka.

JM: So are you hoping that she might breed in Auckland?

KB: Absolutely. So we're hoping that as a young female elephant she'll be ready for breeding in a couple of years time. We'll be looking to do that to help build the numbers here at the zoo and create a family herd.

JM: And who will the partner be? Burma or the new elephant?

KB: So Burma is a female, and Anjalee's a female, and the third elephant will also be a female. So Anjalee will be initially breed using artificial insemination techniques which are widely used around the world's zoo's which allow enable the best genetic diversity to be maintained within populations.

JM: Do elephants usually just have one embryo at a time or do they ever have twins?

KB: 99% of the time an elephant will give birth to one calf and obviously we're hoping for a happy and healthy calf here in a couple of years time here at the zoo.

JM: And a long gestation, so you've got to wait two years for the IVF and then how long for a birth if you're successful with implantation?

KB: Well, yea the gestation period is a long time to keep your fingers crossed as it is over a year, but then that's how long it takes to cook a baby elephant basically.

JM: So maybe 2018?

KB: Where are we now? 2015? Yea so 2018/2019 we would be looking for the sound of little elephant feet.

Kevin Buley says there are plans for another orphaned elephant to make the same trip in 2016.