Carole

Carole is an African elephant who was born in the wild in Zimbabwe around 1983. As a calf, she lost the life she would have known with her family and became part of one of the most unusual—and troubling—chapters in the history of elephant captivity in North America.

In 1984, Carole was among 63 young African elephants transported from Zimbabwe to Florida by Arthur Jones, the inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment. The calves had been taken from Zimbabwe during government elephant culls, in which adult members of their families were killed. Jones loaded the calves onto a Boeing 707 and flew them to his Florida estate, known as Jumbolair. Contemporary accounts describe the young elephants as frightened during the approximately 22-hour flight. Jones initially said he intended to keep them together and establish a self-sustaining herd, but within only a few years the group was broken apart and its members dispersed to zoos, circuses, and private facilities throughout North America.

From June 1984 until 1988, Carole remained in Florida. She was transferred to the Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario around 1988 and later that year to the Zoo Sauvage de Saint-Félicien in Quebec. In April 1993, she was transferred again, this time to Parc Safari in Hemmingford, Quebec, where she would remain for more than 33 years.

Much of Carole’s life in captivity has been intertwined with that of Jeannot, another wild-born African elephant of approximately the same age who was also brought from Zimbabwe through Arthur Jones’s operation. Association of Zoos and Aquariums records show virtually the same path for Jeannot: Zimbabwe, Arthur Jones, Bowmanville, Zoo Sauvage de Saint-Félicien, and finally Parc Safari in 1993. The two were the only African elephants remaining at Parc Safari in recent years.

In June 2026, after more than three decades at Parc Safari, Carole and Jeannot were transported from Canada to Pennsylvania. Either before or upon arrival, Carole and Jeannot were separated after living together for over 40 years. Jeannot was sent to the Pittsburgh Zoo’s International Conservation Center in Somerset County, while Carole was transferred to the Pittsburgh Zoo itself, where the zoo intends for her to live with its remaining female elephant, Tasha.

For Carole, the move is the latest chapter in more than four decades of captivity that began when she was taken from the wild as a calf. In the wild, female African elephants ordinarily remain embedded throughout their lives in complex, multigenerational social networks, maintaining enduring relationships with mothers, sisters, daughters, and other relatives. Carole was deprived of the opportunity to grow up within such a family. Instead, her life has been one of suffering and shaped by human decisions about where she would live, which elephants she would live with, and when she would be moved.

Carole deserves an environment that gives her as much autonomy, space, stability, and meaningful choice as possible. She should have the opportunity to spend the remainder of her life at a true sanctuary, somewhere designed around her needs rather than the needs of a zoo’s exhibit or breeding program.