Simba

Simba is a 58-year-old Asian elephant who has been held captive at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay for over half a century. She was taken from the wild in 1972, at around four years old, an age at which an elephant calf would be at her mother’s side, nursing, and learning from an entire multigenerational family herd who she would live with her entire life. She has spent 54 years confined to a barren, unnatural enclosure for human entertainment.

Captivity causes elephants extreme physical and psychological harm. They are biologically adapted to move great distances and in the wild are active up to 20 hours a day. The enclosure Simba is confined to is a mere two acres and sits in the shadow of Busch Gardens’ roller coasters. Elephants are acutely sensitive to noise and vibration. Surrounded by an active theme park and subjected to regular fireworks displays, Simba is exposed to the noise and vibrations of rides, crowds, and other park activity. These additional stressors only compound the harms inherent in captivity. 

According to a 2026 investigation by the Weeping Elephant Project, drawing on accounts from former keepers, elephants confined at Busch Gardens responded to fireworks and other stressors of the theme park environment by huddling together with their backs turned outward. Former keepers also reported that management directed them not to document the elephants’ negative reactions to fireworks in official welfare records. These accounts raise serious concerns about the impact of the theme park environment on Simba’s well-being.

The investigation also documented troubling circumstances surrounding the deaths of two elephants Simba had lived alongside for decades. In July 2022, Rosie went down during a fireworks display and was unable to stand for more than five hours. Former keepers believed the stress caused by the fireworks contributed to the incident, and Rosie reportedly never fully recovered from her injuries before she was euthanized in November 2024. Less than two years later, Carina was euthanized after reportedly experiencing three down emergencies within six days. A “down” elephant—one who is unable to rise to her feet—is a medical emergency because an elephant’s immense body weight can cause life-threatening complications. For Simba, their deaths have meant the loss, in quick succession, of two elephants who had been part of her social world for decades.

In the wild, female elephants live within lifelong family groups, travel many miles a day, and make countless decisions about where to go, what to do, and how to spend their time. The freedom to make these daily choices about how and with whom they spend their lives is essential to an elephant’s well-being. A two-acre enclosure wedged between roller coasters cannot provide Simba with the autonomy she deserves. 

Simba has spent nearly her entire life in captivity at Busch Gardens. She cannot choose to leave the boundaries of her enclosure, escape the activity surrounding her, seek out new environments, or determine the course of her own life. The choices that would ordinarily belong to her are instead made by the institution that confines her.

Simba deserves the opportunity to spend the rest of her life in an environment that respects her autonomy and provides her with greater space, choice, and freedom. She should be transferred to an accredited elephant sanctuary, where she can live her remaining years with as much agency as possible and experience the closest possible alternative to freedom.