INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A young male elephant tried to kill John Lehnhardt in 1980. Lehnhardt only had four years experience with the animals back then and just three months working with that particular elephant.
Now, with a distinguished 37-year career caring for some of the world’s largest mammals, the Summerplace resident is heading up The National Elephant Center, a bold new adventure in Fellsmere to care for elephants.
Lehnhardt and his wife, Kathy, first came to Vero in 1997 when they both worked for Disney. He spent 11 years in charge of animal husbandry and later developed and implemented the animal use policy for Disney worldwide.
Kathy Lehnhardt remains curator of education at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. While participating in the Disney Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring Project, they fell in love with Vero, and now split their time between Orlando and their Summerplace home.
As executive director of the elephant center, located on 225 acres in Fellsmere, Lehnhardt oversees a facility dedicated to the welfare of elephants.
He grew up around horses, cattle and livestock in the farming community of Nevada, (pronounced Ne-VEY-da) Iowa. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a biology degree, and later was hired at the Lincoln Park Zoo.
He was casually asked if he had any experience with big animals on his first day on the job at that zoo. Answering a simple “yes,” he was told to “go see Tony at the elephant house.”
On that first day, he received his instructions in about 30 minutes – shovel the dung, replenish food if low and “when your shift is over, chain this one here, and that one there.”
He then was left on his own.
Indu and Keke were his first elephants.
And you never forget your first. Indu was 10 and Keke was six. They were young elephants who captured Lehnhardt’s heart.
“By the end of the day I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” he says. “I was in love.”
Lehnhardt was perfect for the job – a big man who takes on big tasks and succeeds in a big way.
In 1998, after just a year working as Disney’s curator of elephants, he became head of animal husbandry, responsible for over 1,500 animals, 300 species and 78 holding facilities.
The love affair endures.
When his career began, behavioral nuance and animal comfort were less understood.
Lehnhardt is credited with revolutionizing international elephant care. But he modestly rejects that notion.
“It just required non-linear thinking,” he says.
It used to be common practice for keepers to have physical contact with elephants, and there was resistance to changing that.
“It’s addictive,” he says. “And, I was addicted to the contact. They are such incredible animals to go through a day and not be able to touch an elephant was like withdrawal.”
Lehnhardt says he realized, “I was serving my purposes, not necessarily what they needed.”
Lehnhardt believes an elephant’s primary contact and support should be social interaction with other elephants, not with humans.
“It shouldn’t be dependent on you as an individual because they out live us,” he says.
Another innovation dealt with chaining elephants at night as a control mechanism.
Animals left unchained overnight would be less responsive to the zookeepers during the day, the thinking went.
In order to demonstrate the benefits of a shift in that thinking, Lehnhardt needed an opportunity.
After Chicago, he moved to the Calgary Zoo in Alberta, Canada. Because of overtime pay constraints, the elephants were left unchained overnight and he was able to conduct a small study.
The results were surprising.
The unchained animals were less stressed and happier when the zookeepers greeted them in the morning.
While at the Calgary Zoo in 1985, he and other animal trainers formed the Elephant Managers Association, a forum dedicated to learning how to work with elephants.
Lehnhardt was the first president of that organization, which still exists today.
At Calgary, he met the young male elephant who tried to kill him.
“We didn’t really understand all the social structure,” Lehnhardt says.
One of his duties was to chain the male and female elephants separately at the end of the day.
For young males, the goal in life is to compete for access to females, and the 6-year-old male was starting to be interested in breeding.
“So what was I doing every night?” he says. “Taking his females and putting them away from him. So I was the male he had to challenge.”
The elephant touched Lehnhardt’s head with his trunk, an action Lehnhardt would not tolerate today.
But instead of warning off that behavior, Lehnhardt turned to speak to a colleague, and “bang!” he says. “He was on top of me.”
The elephant knocked him to the ground twice, then knelt down and curled his trunk.
Lehnhardt had seen the young male practice that maneuver in the yard, but he didn’t recognize that behavior at the time.
“It’s the kill,” he says. “They go down low and drive their tusk into whatever they’re trying to kill.”
“He had the edge of my neck,” says Lehnhardt. “I heard it crack, and he thought he had me,” he says.
Fortunately, the elephant’s tusks had been trimmed. “And he just didn’t have the ivory.”
Lehnhardt grabbed the elephant by the ear and as the elephant stood up he pulled Lehnhardt to his feet, into the “control position.”
“Next to his ear, at his front leg, he can’t get his head and trunk on you, and it’s where you’re in control.”
The elephant backed off.
“And he was done,” says Lehnhardt.
But changes had to be made.
“I was scared witless,” Lehnhardt says with a big laugh. They designed a more systematic approach known as “protective contact facility” and modified how they worked with him and other elephants.
They also devised a safer system of chaining and unchaining elephants that is still used today.
Lehnhardt also spent nine years at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., which is part of the Smithsonian. With that zoo, he traveled extensively to Asia and Africa to study elephants in the wild.
The Disney opportunity came along and then he found Vero Beach.
He and Kathy quickly recognized that this would become their home.
During their first week in Summerplace, they had dinner at three different houses and knew the names of more people on that street than they’d known in 15 years in Orlando.
“And it’s dog friendly,” he says.
Even his dog adheres to the oversized standards: Sam is a 150-pound bull mastiff.
The National Elephant Center has received its initial funding from a group of 74 facilities around the country.
The in-take barn is designed for minimal human-to-animal contact.
Elephants can be bathed, scrubbed, have their nails trimmed and blood samples taken, which all require contact, but are done safely with a barrier between the keeper and the elephant.
It’s all part of Lehnhardt’s strategy in caring for the giant beasts.
Lehnhardt says he believes the first elephants will arrive later this spring but nothing has been finalized.
The first phase of construction cost about $2.4 million. The long range plan includes an additional four phases.
