The politics of protected contact

"...a concept of elephant confinement that consists, principally, of eliminating tactile human contact..." "...the relegation of elephants to a kind of penal confinement." "...a return to the unhappy era of enforced isolation." With protected contact: "...those relationships (human/animal) will become a robotic, remote relationship." "...we could wind up with a generation of unmanageable "wild " zoo elephants. Protected contact will: "...reduce the quality of life for these magnificent animals." In reading the preceding comments from a variety of newspaper, magazine, and newsletter articles, it is difficult to imagine that protected contact was developed as a positive alternative for traditional elephant handling. In addition, looking at the many forms of protected contact that have cropped up around the country, many significantly diverge from the fundamental principles of protected contact. And there really are some basic tenets upon which it was built. They have just gotten a bit distorted along the way. The rather rocky road protected contact has traveled thus far is to be expected. Although not a new idea, it is one that, once organized into a cohesive methodology constituting the beginnings of a real system, fundamentally challenged the status quo. It is irrelevant that that was not the intention. The emotional resistance to protected contact arises from a community under siege. Ironically, the rush to protected contact by crisis-driven zoo management also threatens to undermine its structure and intent. So, in order to sort out the confusion and to address the concerns, a review of the basic tenets of protected contact from the perspective of those who developed it is in order