In her 42 years of life, Asha has lived in three places: Africa, Virginia and now on a ranch in Williston. Now, animal rights groups want the African elephant moved again.
Free All Captive Elephants (FACE), a South Florida-based advocacy organization, has filed a complaint with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) asking that Asha be seized from Two Tails Ranch on Northeast 81st Street.
She’s been living there since last December.
FACE filed its complaint on Oct. 1, citing what it insists was the ranch’s failure to obtain a proper transfer permit, as well as concerns about Asha’s missing left tusk. The ranch’s owner, Patricia Zerbini, said she told FWC that the elephant lost the tusk by its own doing in August.
FWC inspected Two Tails three days after the filing and found “no welfare concerns,” according to an agency report dated Oct. 18. The report did not recommend any disciplinary action against the ranch or Zerbini, and dismissed FACE’s request for Asha’s seizure.
Born in the African Savanna biome, Asha spent 40 years at the privately owned Natural Bridge Zoo in Virginia. FACE and other animal rights groups had hoped she would be moved to a sanctuary when the zoo was raided in December as part of an animal cruelty investigation.
That investigation led to the seizure of about 100 animals from the zoo, according to news reports. Rockbridge County, Virginia, gained custody of 71 of them after a six-day jury trial, that state’s attorney general’s office announced in March.
Robin Vitulle, a cofounder and co-president of FACE, which is based in Satellite Beach, said Asha should have been among those seized. But on Dec. 1, five days before the Natural Bridge raid, Asha was sent to Two Tails, arriving early the next day, according to a letter to FWC from Mark Wilson, a veterinarian from Sumter County.
In his letter, Wilson cited veterinary and previous dental concerns as the reason for transferring Asha, but he did not note any illnesses or injuries after evaluating the elephant on her first day at Two Tails. Wilson also in the letter expressed his “dismay” regarding FWC’s accessibility and responsiveness – and suggested he was among the few veterinarians “qualified” to treat Asha.
According to a FWC incident report dated Feb. 13, Zerbini told an investigator, Kenneth Holmes, that she had all of the proper documentation, that she had been talking with Natural Bridge since 2019 about transferring Asha to Two Tails, and that she had asked Wilson to obtain the import permit. She also told Holmes that Wilson told her he had the permit, the report states.
In the report, the investigator wrote: “I advised P. Zerbini again about the failure to obtain an approved import permit prior to ASHA coming to her facility. She reiterated that M. Wilson told her he got the permit. I advised her that since the elephant was transported using her equipment and came to her facility, she should have done due diligence and asked for the permit. In addition, the permit should have accompanied the elephant while in transit.”
“I don’t have anything to hide,” Zerbini told WUFT News. Referring to Asha, the ranch owner said: “She is here legally. She’s here, for now, permanently.”
In March, FWC issued Wilson a warning violation for not obtaining the required permit. Wilson did not respond to several texts, calls and voicemails from WUFT News seeking comment.
Asha’s status and the missing tusk
Two Tails Ranch is 104-acre boarding facility that has housed over 300 Asian and African elephants since its founding in 1984, according to Zerbini. In addition to guided private tours offering opportunities to take photos with, feed and ride the elephants, Two Tails also rents out elephants for circuses, weddings, fairs and parades.
Asha, who goes by Asia at the ranch, does not give rides and lives in a separate paddock away from people and the four Asian elephants also on the property.
Photos taken by WUFT News on Sept. 7 show Asha was missing her left tusk, despite having it as recently as June 18, according to according to footage from Cardinal News, a Virginia-based news site. Vitulle said the missing tusk was a major concern, and her group’s documentation of it “escalated and solidified” what she said was their “alarming concern” for her health and welfare.
“What happened to her? Where is the tusk?” Vitulle asked. “It raises eyebrows.”
Zerbini said Asha broke her tusk off while playing in her enclosure at night on Aug. 27.
“It’s like a chipped tooth,” she said. “It happens very often in African elephants. They snap them all the time.”
However, elephants’ teeth don’t fall out, according to George Wittemyer, a professor at Colorado State University and a technical adviser on elephants to the Kenya Wildlife Service. Wittemyer said Asha’s keepers at the ranch must have removed the tusk. Zerbini said that simply wasn’t so.
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute said a broken tusk can sometimes impact the pulp cavity, which is at the base of the tusk and contains blood, nerves and tissue. Cavity impacts can be painful and increase risk of serious infections, the institute states.
According to the FWC inspection report, Zerbini said that Wilson, Asha’s veterinarian, inspected the broken tusk and found no immediate cause for concern. Wilson reported that the break was clean, and there was no swelling or discharge that would have indicated an infection.
Zerbini told Holmes, the investigator, that the tusk was more brittle compared to normal tusks, which she attributed to possible poor nutrition when Asha was a calf.
The tusk is still at the ranch, where it must stay since it’s part of Asha’s license, Zerbini said.
The path forward
After Asha’s experience at Natural Bridge Zoo, Vitulle of FACE said Two Tails was the last place she wanted to see Asha go. She said she feared another zoo would be unequipped to give Asha the care elephants require, care she said was absent during Asha’s time at Natural Bridge.
In Virginia, Asha had been chained to a barn, jabbed with bull hooks and forced to stand in her own waste, and once gave 357 people rides over two days, according to an affidavit filed with the Powhatan Circuit Court in Virginia to obtain a search warrant for the zoo.
Zerbini said that while she expects Asha to live out the rest of her days at Two Tails, there’s a chance the elephant could return to Natural Bridge, particularly as that zoo comes under new ownership and remodels the animal’s habitat.
However, the animal rights groups said they’re hoping for a different future.
“(We’ve) been trying to urge her freedom to sanctuary for many years,” said Courtney Scott, an elephant consultant for In Defense of Animals, which is headquartered in California.
Hers and other animal rights groups want Asha transferred to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, an over 3,000-acre sanctuary founded in 1995. It houses 13 elephants – and their habitats are closed to the public, according to its website.
Scott said she worries about Asha’s wellbeing if the animal lives the rest of her life in isolation. Elephants are extremely social and live in female herds in the wild, she said.
“If they have no use for her, they should be releasing her,” Scott said of Two Tails.
The FWC inspection report states that Two Tails met all captive wildlife facility requirements, and that Asha appeared healthy and well-groomed and “there were no severe circumstances.”
Denise Gaug, a co-president of FACE, said of FWC’s conclusion in an email to WUFT this week that “though disappointing, their lack of action is not surprising.”
Zerbini said she took the advocacy groups’ concerns and complaints with “a grain of salt.”
“The reality of the world is that if we don’t have them in zoos and captivity and stuff, we’re not going to have them at all,” she said. “We don’t starve our animals. We don’t beat our animals. My thing is not to be cruel. My job is to take care of them.”
With an unpaid staff of seven and a few rotating volunteers, Zerbini said the elephants are cared for nonstop, and that every penny from tours, rentals and elephant encounter activities goes to their care. “My life has been dedicated to doing this, and I will do this till I drop dead,” she said. “It makes me happy and feel like I have a purpose on this planet.”
Zerbini also said Asha has come a long way since her arrival at Two Tails, and that all her elephants live long, healthy lives. “It’s not Disney World – it’s not,” she said. “But you know what? I think my elephants are happier than the ones at Disney World.”