"RCAF asked to fly Toronto zoo elephants to PAWS"

RCAF asked to fly Toronto zoo elephants to PAWS

By: Donovan Vincent at the Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/20/rcaf_asked_to_fly_toronto_zoo_elephants_to_paws.html

"SNIP...........................................

A high-level meeting involving Royal Canadian Air Force officials is set for Thursday morning at the Toronto Zoo, where the discussion will be the potential use of a CC-177 Globemaster III jet freighter to transport three female elephants to a California sanctuary.

Details surrounding the private meeting are scarce, but according to a source the meeting is expected to draw zoo officials, a representative from the office of Toronto’s city manager, as well as Zoocheck, (the organization working in Canada on behalf of the PAWS sanctuary in California) and representatives from Active Environments, a firm that specializes in training and transporting animals for zoos and sanctuaries.

But the meeting has drawn the wrath of at least one zoo board of management member, Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, who sent an urgent email Wednesday to federal Defence Minister Peter MacKay, saying the planned moved to PAWS is “controversial and of great concern to many of us’’ and asking that Ottawa not participate.

She and critics of the move to PAWS cite concerns about active tuberculosis at the sanctuary, though proponents counter that Toronto’s elephants won’t come in contact with the illness.

...........................................SNIP"