PAWS is not a zoo, we are a Sanctuary; we provide a dignified peaceful refuge to injured, abused, unwanted and retired animals. Zoos, on the other hand, seek to form collections of healthy, virile specimens to exhibit and breed in displays that are often inadequate. Fortunately, some zoos are changing their ways.

When it comes to our elephants, our medical issues arrive with the elephant. The same cannot be said for many zoos and circuses which often create foot problems, arthritis and skin diseases in elephants due to lack of space, poor facilities and unnatural substrates. PAWS inherits all of those problems when those animals are retired to PAWS.

Virtually every elephant that comes to PAWS has a history of physical and/or psychological illness, often untreatable. We are the last alternative to the painful and lonely death of an animal who may have suffered most of its life.

With the City of Toronto's decision to donate the Toronto Zoo elephants to PAWS, the question of TB at PAWS has become the focus of certain zoo personnel and other misguided individuals who are opposed to sending the Toronto Zoo elephants to PAWS in the uninformed belief that their presence at PAWS endangers their welfare.

Read more. . .

Pat Derby addresses the issue of tuberculosis at PAWS in her latest blog. To read . . . click here.