FELLSMERE — A group of about 30 people attended the Fellsmere Property Owners Association Tuesday evening to hear directly from members of the National Elephant Center, which plans to construct a 225-acre facility in town.
“We’ve got elephants coming to town,” member and Fellsmere City Councilman Joel Tyson told the crowd leading up to the discussion. The crowd responded with enthusiastic applause.
“We’re really anxious to have this happen,” said Ernie Wilson, a Fellsmere resident and regular attendee of the association’s meetings.
Wilson said the National Elephant Center could serve as a tourist attraction in the future. He added that he was pleased to hear that the center would be more than a sanctuary for retired and unwanted elephants. Instead, the center would be aiding in elephant research and population conservation.
The National Elephant Center plans to break ground on the first phase sometime in April and finish construction within seven or eight months. The first elephants could arrive by the start of 2013.
Chief Operating Officer Jeff Bolling and Executive Director John Lehnhardt, who between them have more than 56 years of experience working with elephants, presented their plans to the Fellsmere Property Owners Association.
The facility would be used to help zoos across the country to temporarily house their elephants while the zoos undergo expansion or exhibit modifications. It would also serve as a research facility, where veterinarians could develop information and data on diseases elephants could have.
One person in the audience asked about the use of bull hooks – a controversial tool sometimes used to train elephants.
Bolling displayed a long stick with a bulb at the end – called a target – and a small tool that makes a “click” sound when pressed, noting those are the tools the staff would be using on the elephants – not bull hooks.
He said there would always be physical barriers between the elephants and humans for safety purposes and the target-clicker method would be employed to train elephants to present certain parts of their body for medical purposes.
A short video clip depicted Willie, an 11-foot tall 13,000-pound aggressive bull elephant, working his left ear into a slit between two posts so the veterinarian could take a blood sample for study. While the blood was being drawn, another employee fed Willie through a slot near the ground.
“It’s amazing what a few pieces of carrot and sweet potato will do,” Lehnhardt said, garnering chuckles from the audience.
Bolling said Fellsmere is the perfect location for the National Elephant Center due to access to the highway and veterinary care and the climate. Having 225 acres to start with more land nearby for future growth doesn’t hurt, either.
“That gives us a lot of room,” Bolling said.
The center will house both African and Asian elephants, which for health purposes will be kept separated.
Bolling explained that Asian elephants are prone to contracting elephant-specific herpes as babies – an issue the center plans to research.
Many of the audience’s questions centered more on the elephants themselves than what the center plans to do.
Such questions posed to Lehnhardt and Bolling ranged from how much baby elephants weigh and how much they eat to what will be done with all that elephant manure.
“It’s some of the best fertilizer on earth,” Lehnhardt said of the elephant waste. He added that the center would collect the dung and use it to grow the elephant grasses and other food sources the elephants eat.
Excess manure might be sold or otherwise provided to the public at some point.
One in the audience asked about whether volunteers would be called on to help at the center. Lehnhardt said they hadn’t worked that out yet but certainly volunteers would not directly work with the elephants.
“There’s tremendous risks involved,” he said, adding that those who work with the elephants are specially trained to do so.
Instead, volunteers could help out in the visitor and education center once that piece of the center opens.
Another asked how the center would keep track of the elephants on 225 acres of land.
“We’re not real worried about them getting lost,” Lehnhardt said.
Bolling explained that the property would consist of various paddocks ranging in size from 5 to 20 acres where the elephants could roam. Staff members would know which elephants were in which paddocks.
Heather Jordan, who attended the meeting with her husband, Billy Jordan, and father-in-law Bill Jordan, said she was happy to see the National Elephant Center select Fellsmere for its facility.
“I think it’s a wonderful thing to have in the area,” she said. “There aren’t many areas that can say they have this in their backyard.”
She and her family said they are looking forward to when the center will open the public component and offer tours.
The following are some of the questions the Fellsmere Property Owners Association asked of Jeff Bolling and John Lehnhardt:
Q. How will the elephants be protected by hurricanes?
A. “They’ll be fine,” Bolling said. Lehnhardt explained that when Hurricane Andrew struck the Miami Zoo, the elephants weathered the storm better than the building they had. “They won’t blow away.”
Q. What are the ages of the elephants coming to the center?
A. Lehnhardt said they would run the full range from young males maybe 3 or 4 years old to old retirees from small zoos that can no longer care for their elephants.
Q. How much do they eat daily?
A. Females can eat between 200-300 pounds of food; males about 500 pounds. They eat high fiber, low protein diets that are not efficiently digested, which is why they eat so much.
Q. How will the facility be secured for the elephants and from the public?
A. The elephants would be contained behind a series of post-and-cable barriers and an 8-foot chain link fence around the site would serve as a deterrent to the public.
Q. How many full time staff members will be hired?
A. To start, there will be four or five full time staffers with more to be added as the number of elephants increases. They will be required to meet training requirements and have elephant experience.
For more information about the National Elephant Center, visit www.TheNationalElephantCenter.org.