As soon as Anne’s story broke, a huge problem presented itself: how to get her out of the circus and to safety. The first difficulty was persuading the Robertses to let her go. She had lived with them since childhood and had never known anything else. Also, previous attempts to persuade them to give her up had ended in stalemate. And once that huge problem was overcome there was the further issue of where on earth she would go. As Jon Cracknell, director of animal operations at Longleat, where Anne now lives, points out: if you have an abused dog to rehome, there are thousands of kennels to send them to, but where do you put an elephant?
Although it seemed sensible to move her to a zoo with an existing herd of elephants, in reality, this was hugely problematic. Anne was more used to the company of humans than other elephants, having lived in the circus all her life. She had lost her two elephant companions more than a decade earlier. Introducing her to an existing herd was a risky strategy. Elephant herds are matriarchal, meaning mothers, grandmothers, daughters and aunts tend to stick together. Anne would likely struggle as she would have no link to any of the elephants in the herd. Introducing new elephants to established herds is also rather like introducing a child to a class at school late in the year: a possible recipe for disaster. Given her age and health and Bobby’s insistence that she didn’t get on with other elephants, it was always going to be a difficult decision. More difficult still is the reality that if the herd didn’t like her and there was a battle for dominance, she would probably be the loser. You cannot come between two elephants having a fight.
And so an intensive behind-the-scenes operation began to decide what to do next. One of those who picked up the Daily Mail and read the story when it broke that Saturday was Jon Cracknell, who had accepted the job but not yet started at Longleat. A trained vet, with six years’ experience working with elephants, and an elephant advisor to the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA), he began to wonder whether his future employers could offer her a home. An animal obsessive who had wanted to be a vet since the age of nine, he specialised in anaesthesia, especially in elephants and bears. As he wandered around the Lanes in Brighton that day, following a party the night before, he phoned his soon-to-be boss David Bradley, who he knew wanted elephants at Longleat. ‘I’m not keen on elephants in captivity,’ Jon says. ‘I don’t think I have the ability and the facilities… but Longleat does have a lot of space and potential and in this case it was fairly unique in that here was an elephant that needed a home. So whilst I wasn’t actively looking for elephants, there was an interest from Longleat because it was felt that the safari park should have elephants. Anne came along and with my strong background in welfare – having worked for several organisations globally – I just felt, right, we can do something which a lot of other places can’t.’
At the time, Anne was an old lady and hadn’t been expected to live that long, so Jon thought Longleat could offer her a temporary home. His initial dilemma was how to contact the Robertses. The circus was on the road and he feared any letter he sent would get lost among the hate mail. Plus, time was of the essence – Anne urgently needed to be found a new home. So Jon contacted a vet he knew who had worked in circuses, and who luckily happened to know the couple, and sent them Jon’s number. The next day – Sunday – Moira Roberts made contact. ‘Moira rang me up,’ says Jon, ‘and said: “Is there anything you can do to help us?” because she was having such a terrible time. She said they’d been looking for a new home for Anne for ten years but discussions with animal charities hadn’t come to anything.’
The ball had started rolling. And it turned out that others had also thought of Longleat. Matt Ford, owner of Specialist Wildlife Services (SWS), an animal rescue company that rehomes exotic animals for zoos and governments, had also seen the newspaper coverage of Anne. He had independently come to the conclusion that Longleat would be a good spot as it had previously been home to an elephant herd a decade ago and still had an elephant house. With Matt’s expertise in logistics and moving animals, Jon’s work as a vet with knowledge of elephant welfare and Longleat as a potential base, they had the beginnings of a plan… and not a moment too soon. As the operation to get Anne out of the circus gathered pace, the public outcry was growing and the story was being carried daily via every major newspaper and media outlet, both in Britain and internationally. Subjected to a huge backlash, the Robertses were panicking. Recalling his experience of meeting them, Jon says: ‘They told me they had grief and petitioning outside the circus. They’d had people outside slagging them off, they’d had phone calls and verbal abuse personally.’
Pressure was also being applied behind the scenes. RSPCA inspector Jody Gordon, who was with the charity’s Special Operations Unit which handles investigations, had noted the fallout and spoke to Bobby privately about his options. ‘I spoke to Bobby and said: “Look with everything that’s gone on with Anne’s health as it is now, I think this is probably going to be the time where you’re going to need to sign her over and find her a new home, because if you don’t the pressure will come on for an investigation against you anyway. Beyond that, even if there’s no investigation, I don’t think that you will be able to travel with Anne without coming under severe public pressure.”’
On the Tuesday morning, Jon met with the Robertses in Cheshire, where the circus was camped at the time. ‘I sat with them for about an hour and they told me what a shit time they were having,’ he says. ‘They were lovely, actually. They were really welcoming and they weren’t suspicious. Well, they were a little bit suspicious because they didn’t know me and that’s fair enough. We had a big chat and basically we agreed that Longleat could offer her a home and they were happy with it and that was that.’
Though it was, of course, slightly more complicated than that. Jon, mindful of the fact that there could be a conflict of interest if Longleat owned Anne, agreed with the Robertses that ownership of Anne should go to SWS. ‘We don’t own her – we never owned her. I’m not stupid,’ he says. ‘The idea is I’m looking out for Anne’s welfare so we maintain and look after her but we don’t actually own her.’ He is very insistent on the point that no money changed hands between Longleat and the Robertses. Matt Ford of SWS also states that there was no financial arrangement and no guarantee or otherwise given to the Robertses. Neither he nor Jon has an ongoing relationship with the couple, they say. So Matt took over ownership and the planning could begin.
But there was another much more pressing issue than simply removing Anne from the circus. The RSPCA had visited to review her health on the Tuesday after the footage emerged. Tim Bouts, head vet at Whipsnade at the time, who is experienced in working with elephants, wrote the report. In it, he noted his concern about her health. He also said he was concerned that she had no regular access to water, though Bobby said it was regularly given to her directly rather than left out for her to drink. He wrote: ‘Lameness due to arthritis seems to be so severe that transport of the animal would not currently be safe and could well be in contravention of legislation on animal transportation.’
He tells me: ‘I could see she had very bad arthritis and I said we should immediately start treating it. I said if the treatment didn’t work that euthanasia was an option because she was an elderly animal who was in pain constantly.’ This was a huge dilemma: risk moving Anne and possibly compromise her welfare, or leave her at the circus, where her welfare was already not good. Worryingly, his report concluded: ‘Ultimately, if the arthritis cannot be satisfactorily controlled to allow safe transport and the welfare of the elephant is too compromised, then euthanasia would be considered a valid option in a case like this.’ They were the words no one had wanted to hear.
The Daily Mail, which had already started receiving letters from readers wanting to pledge money to Anne’s future happiness, had to issue a warning about her health and explain why it couldn’t accept donations towards her future. Jon Cracknell says: ‘I don’t think you’d have had any problems euthanising her as she was. Actually, you could justify it. Euthanasia can solve a complex issue sometimes and I think the recommendation was justifiable because at that time there was nowhere for her to go but it was felt that she should be given a chance to see if we could help.’
The following day, Nic Masters, then an independent vet and now head of veterinary services at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), assessed Anne. Nic – also chair of the UK Elephant Welfare Group (EWG) – says he was ‘shocked’ by her appearance and how ‘ragged’ she was, but decided it was in her interests to go ahead with the move. ‘I got to see her on some pain relief, already much improved, and I think I still thought long and hard about whether it was OK to move her,’ he explains. He didn’t think, however, it was viable to send her to an overseas sanctuary. ‘I remember thinking very early on that that seemed like completely the wrong idea. I thought that transport in the UK was probably going to be acceptable but anything more would be too much for her, certainly at that time. I was worried that she wouldn’t be able to stay upright, to be honest. I was worried from a physical point of view that if she went down on the plane, for example, and was unable to get up again, what on earth people would do, how awful would that be.’
‘There were risks,’ says Jon, ‘there are always risks with moving any animal – but they were more so for Anne. But the benefits of moving her and getting her out of her current situation outweighed the risk of leaving her. So there was no benefit to not moving her.’
Things were now moving at a rapid pace. Wednesday saw the first planning meeting at the RSPCA headquarters in Horsham, West Sussex. Previously, the RSPCA had discussed moving Anne with the Robertses. The charity’s Dr Ros Clubb acknowledges that the Robertses were receptive, but says that a suitable new home could not be found for her, and so she remained. Longleat, she says, didn’t appear on the radar as they hadn’t had elephants for at least a decade: ‘It was only when the ADI footage of her being beaten emerged that obviously everything stepped up. That was when Longleat came forward to say we’ve got these old facilities and guys on site who used to manage these elephants.’ She concludes it was the ‘ideal scenario’ for an ‘emergency exit’ for Anne, though concedes it wasn’t perfect long-term because it wasn’t large and had resident rhinos.
Jon Cracknell and Matt Ford decided to bring lots of organisations to the table in a kind of wildlife welfare summit to decide what was best for Anne’s future. In attendance at the top-secret meeting were Jon, Matt, Nic Masters, the RSPCA, the Born Free Foundation – which campaigns to keep wildlife in the wild – and ADI, who had shot the footage. But it wasn’t long before the first difficulties began.
ADI had been monitoring Anne since the mid-nineties and took a great interest in her welfare. When they finally secured the footage to get her out of the circus, they were understandably keen to be involved in the next stage but their fundamental aims as an animal rights group fighting to keep animals in the wild were, like Born Free’s, at odds with Longleat’s, a safari park which was home to numerous captive wild animals on show to the public. ADI wanted Anne to be taken to an elephant sanctuary in the US, where she could live out her days with other elephants in something akin to her natural habitat. Others had read the veterinary reports and were seriously concerned about her health and were still considering euthanasia. It was to prove a difficult point – Jon describes it as a ‘fairly heated debate’ – and the meeting apparently ended with an RSPCA lawyer storming out of the room. Luckily, there was consensus on the point that Anne needed to be moved to a place of safety as quickly as possible and so it was agreed by everyone that she would go to Longleat. A press release was then issued.
So a team was assembled and the planning entered its final stages. Matt took over logistics. He knew where to get an elephant truck – not a small feat to track down in a country with not many elephants. There were actually two trucks in the UK, but one was Bobby’s and it had ‘Bobby Roberts Super Circus’ emblazoned on the side. The prospect of moving Anne in that, with animal rights protesters on the lookout, was not a good one. As Jon says: ‘We didn’t know what to expect. There was so much antagonism at the time. You couldn’t be in a Bobby Roberts van – you’d have got stopped and she’d have suffered.’ So instead, Matt approached Woburn, who had an elephant truck. Unfortunately, they hadn’t used it for a long time. ‘Now the first challenge was on the first day,’ says Jon, ‘because the Woburn van hadn’t been used and hadn’t moved elephants in a long while. Because of this, it hadn’t had its MOT and it wasn’t roadworthy. So we looked, and the nearest appointment we could get for the vehicle was something like in three or four weeks. I was like: “Crap! What are we going to do?”’ But luckily, the RSPCA phoned a contact in the Department for Transport, who pulled some strings, and the van was approved the following afternoon. Without that intervention, the operation could have been very seriously delayed.
So the team was now ready to go. It included John Minion from Yorkshire Wildlife Park, an ex-elephant keeper who had experience in moving elephants, Lynne Thomson, who was head of elephants at Woburn, cameramen from SWS, who were to document the whole thing, the Born Free Foundation and the RSPCA as observers, and Jon and Nic Masters on hand for veterinary support.
Meanwhile, Longleat had to be prepared for Anne’s imminent arrival. The elephant house had been converted into a rhino house after Longleat’s herd of elephants moved out, so they had to get metal workers in to set about making it once again suitable for elephants. Although the original framework remained, since the rhinos had moved in everything had been converted and downsized. Extra posts had been put in, which all needed to be removed, the doors had to be beefed up so she couldn’t pull them off with her three-tonne frame and hay mangers needed to be installed. It was a daunting task.
On the Saturday night, the team assembled for the move. Although it had been confirmed that Anne would go to Longleat, no one knew when it would happen and the mission was carried out in great secrecy. I was one of the few people who knew it was going ahead because Longleat had agreed to work with the Daily Mail newspaper after we exposed what had happened. The team stayed at Lynne Thomson’s house that night, ready to depart in the dark early hours of Sunday morning on the mission, which cost £15,000.
They arrived at Polebrook, the winter quarters of the circus, a few hours later as day was breaking. This was when the hard work started and everyone was nervous. As Chris Draper of the Born Free Foundation put it: ‘The mind boggled at the potential of how badly wrong it could go.’ They were worried about what the industry calls ‘antis’ – animal rights protesters – attacking the site after police had warned them that this could occur. Protesters were now picketing the circus every day and the internet was abuzz with threats against the Robertses, while newspapers and television news carried daily updates on Anne’s plight. For this reason, police oversaw the move. Extraordinarily, they put Anne in the same category as a high security prisoner, so she could only be mentioned on the police radio waves using a code name. As a Category A prisoner, she had a police escort out of Polebrook and a police escort at the other end to ensure the move was safe and stress-free.
When they arrived at the barn, it was the first time many of the members of the team had seen Anne since the abuse. Chris Draper of the Born Free Foundation says: ‘I’d seen her several times in the preceding years on the road and I’d always been very concerned about her gait in particular. It hadn’t changed much; it was still the same. She was dragging her feet but that implies to me it was obviously arthritis. She wasn’t a mobile animal and needed proper care for it rather than to be loaded into a van each week and be shipped off here, there and everywhere.’ He says that her condition was ‘pretty crummy’ when he arrived, and adds: ‘I think she’d improved from when the first inspection had happened because they’d got her on some pain medication by then so she seemed alert and bright but her skin was terrible – really, really bad. One of her ears was just covered in dead skin. She obviously hadn’t been given access to anything to scratch upon. Her feet looked a bit of a mess – there were one or two lumps and bumps on her. You could obviously see the gait issue was never going away. She didn’t look good.’
So without further hesitation, it was time to load Anne and get her away from the circus forever. There had been much discussion of how exactly to get her on to the truck. Everyone agreed that it needed to be done with the utmost care as lots could go wrong but in the event, the reins were handed to Bobby. Jon recalls him simply saying to her: ‘Come on’ and her plodding straight into the truck. But Chris Draper says it was slightly more complicated. ‘If I remember rightly, they needed Bobby to walk her in as that was the simplest and safest thing,’ he says. ‘I think he lost his temper a little bit but he managed to get her in there. He was tugging on her trunk a few times – it wasn’t quite as smooth as I’d imagine he wanted it to be – but she got in and it was fairly stress-free, I have to say. She’s done it a million times, hasn’t she? She’s got into trucks and out of trucks so in theory it shouldn’t have been a problem. She was loaded up uneventfully and we were on our way.’
With a police escort on to the motorway, the team left for Longleat in convoy with Bobby and their precious cargo. The five-hour move was tense: the elephant truck had video and they could see her discomfort. Jon says that because of Anne’s difficulty in standing, there was a worry she could fall because of the swaying movement on the journey. ‘She wasn’t very happy, but we took it slowly,’ he explains. ‘She had trouble with the move. She’s moved a lot herself but with her orthopaedic issues there were concerns that she might go down and you have to plan for everything. So if she went down or was ill, we had a team there for euthanasia because, to be honest, it was a bit of a risk moving her and we weren’t sure if she could be moved. So we took a bit of a chance with that but we felt it was the right thing to do to get her to a better place.’
They had planned the journey carefully, but it wasn’t all smooth running. The police had advised them to go via Bath, from where they would have an escort to Longleat. Jon simply says it wasn’t ‘ideal’. He adds: ‘No one realised that an elephant was going past. It’s amazing. Even though the truck had “Woburn elephants” down the side of it, no one even noticed.’
Eventually, on Sunday afternoon, they arrived at Longleat. It had been a huge race against time to finish Anne’s enclosure before her arrival, and in the event she was about half an hour early so the truck had to be parked up in the woods while the welding was finished and everything was given a last check and clean-up. Again, they had the dilemma of how to get her off the truck and this time it was more complex. Longleat is a huge safari park that hosts more than a million visitors a year. The team felt that no chances could be taken with her safety – and everyone else’s.
It was decided that she should be taken into the enclosure using chains. This meant shackling her ankles in chains and then walking her in, one step at a time. Bobby could not comprehend why they wouldn’t let him walk her in, while the Born Free Foundation were not happy at all but the chaining went ahead. Jon says: ‘We insisted on the chains to move her because she was unpredictable and we didn’t know what would happen. She was chained from a safety point of view. To be fair to Bobby, he wasn’t actually very happy with that because he felt he could have just walked her in and he could’ve done, but in retrospect if she’d charged off on a rampage and killed a load of people and we had to shoot her that would be pretty disastrous – and you have to consider that. You’ve got to remember that this is one week after the newspaper article and an elephant move is usually planned a year in advance.’ He concludes: ‘It wasn’t compromising her welfare just for that two minutes to walk in.’
Anne’s former keeper Ryan Hockley, who is now head of safari at the park and who had experience with Longleat’s last herd of elephants, which went to France in 2001, recalls: ‘There was quite a lot of hullabaloo when she moved in, with people looking nervous. When elephants are loading or unloading, it’s nerve-wracking. We always have to plan so it’s safe. In the world we live in now you’re nice to elephants. We do give them a lot of respect and assume that if you give them an opportunity to show their distress in a stressful situation, they will take it.’ He also admits that there were fears when she first arrived that she would be ‘damaged goods’, but adds: ‘All we knew is she had to get out of where she was and come here to an alternative home.’
So on that Sunday, 3 April 2011, Anne finally arrived at her retirement home. And, like any pensioner after a long journey, she was exhausted. ‘I think she was tired,’ Jon says. ‘It was a long journey. It’s a long journey for anyone, and she’s in her old age and she’s knackered and she had to stand and everything else.’ But what happened next surprised everyone. With the zeal of a toddler in a particularly foul tantrum, Anne lay waste to her enclosure, which had been so lovingly prepared for her. Perhaps she’d realised she was finally free, perhaps it was just her way of saying thank you, but she tore her new habitat to bits when she arrived.
‘Suddenly she had an area where she could do what she wanted,’ says Jon. ‘You can read into it what you like, that she’s so suppressed, but she went out there and she was chucking stuff and she basically broke everything she could and she smashed it. She cut her trunk up – she was an arse!’
But she was free. She had a new home, which she shared with five rhinos, a paddock to herself to run free in and a lovely view of some ponds with pelicans and flamingos and the sweeping, Capability Brown-designed landscape of Longleat Safari Park & Adventure Park.