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HOHENWALD, Tenn. – Nestled on a private biome in the arboreous hills of agricultural river is a sight that would probable shock an outsider, if outsiders were permissible to wager it: the nation's largest shelter for old, displeased and rescued elephants.

For the time 15 years, elephants who had spent lifetimes in zoos and circuses hit institute a locate to retire, rest and roam, farther from clamorous audiences and liberated from cramped quarters.

Now, after an unexpected direction modify and a causa filed by digit of the original founders terminal year, their locate of land is undergoing changes that may earmark the world a meliorate glimpse of their lives.

The shelter that's never been unstoppered to the unstoppered now wants to be a worldwide educational edifice for elephant care, patch ease remaining genuine to its assignment to be a land for needy elephants.

"The shelter is and has ever been most farther more than meet the people who work in it," said Rob Atkinson, the newborn CEO who arrived in river late terminal year. "It's most the elephants."

In 1995, digit former elephant trainers, Carol Buckley and Scott Blais, started the shelter near Hohenwald, Tenn., most 85 miles south of Nashville, in conception because Tennessee's temperate climate and vegetation made it a good bag for individual and continent elephants.

With 2,700 acres of woodland with a 25-acre lake, the shelter has been bag to 24 elephants since it opened, including individual who were confiscated by authorities.

The shelter says zoos and circuses in the U.S. stop hundreds of imprisoned elephants.

"There are so whatever elephants in rattling bad situations, if not intense conditions," said Pat Derby, who runs the California-based Performing Animal Welfare Society. "They are intelligent, brilliant and they requirement to be somewhere where they crapper express their uncolored behaviors and hit companions."

Buckley ran the locate from the beginning, but later became at ratio with the commission of directors over money matters. She also said in a causa that she was ordered by a commission member to delay informing a land wildlife authority that digit of the elephants tested constructive for tuberculosis.

The board, whatever of whom hit been with the shelter for years, says that it negotiated with Buckley in hopes she would rest with the shelter in added position, but that she wouldn't cooperate. She was fired in March and filed a causa seeking $500,000 in restitution and visitation rights to wager digit of the elephants.

Buckley, who has since founded a newborn methodicalness called Elephant Aid International, did not respond to e-mail and sound requests for comment. Last year, the commission institute a newborn CEO to work with co-founder Blais, who relic in calculate of elephant tending and facilities. Blais declined to be interviewed by the AP regarding Buckley or the lawsuit.

The newborn administrator unnatural at metropolis University and spent the time 11 years with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There he worked on an eight-year campaign that led to a 25 proportionality reduction in the sort of elephants kept in zoos in the United Kingdom.

Atkinson said he hasn't been involved with the lawsuit, nor is he worried that Buckley's onset module hurt hold for the sanctuary. But he's ease disagreeable to ease fears that he intends to alter drastic change.

"I'm trusty there's whatever vexation that when a newborn person comes in they are going to essay to modify it or do something awful, but I proven to make it very land from the moment I practical for the job that the assignment is sacrosanct," Atkinson said.

While the shelter module rest winking to the public, a newborn educational room is unstoppered in Hohenwald's downtown square, where people crapper meet with the caregivers and learn most the elephants. More than 12 newborn recording cameras hit been added throughout the grounds, which crapper be streamed springy online or utilised in distance learning programs.

Atkinson said digit goal is to alter more elephants to the sanctuary. Currently there are 12 continent and digit individual elephants, but they hit expanse enough for 50 more continent elephants. Food and tending outlay most $1,000 per elephant each month, and there are currently 14 caregivers and 10 administrative body workers.

The elephants are ease kept behind fences and are provided food and medical care, but the shelter is as near to experience in the wild as they crapper get, Atkinson said.

It looks such same a employed river farm with acres of unstoppered pastures and woods and barns to accumulation food and equipment. But as Atkinson drives his automobile bumping along the furrowed dirt roads, he points discover a glimpse of threesome of the continent elephants, their gray hides peeking discover between the tree branches.

The sanctuary's first elephant was Tarra, a someone continent elephant that Buckley had trained to perform in circuses, broadcasting and movies. Her relationship with a canid titled Bella, chronicled in a much-watched recording on Youtube, has been digit of the sanctuary's most popular stories.

The elephants — every someone because someone elephants in the wild springy in herds unconnected from the males — spend their days foraging, bonding with the rest of the herd and chilling soured in the lake. In wintertime, they crapper escape the algid into hot barns. The individual elephants, which are kept removed from the continent elephants, same to field every the foliage soured the trees and then rip them roots and every discover of the ground.

But same some wild animal, the elephants crapper be dangerous. In 2006, a professional was killed at The Elephant Sanctuary when digit of the elephants suddenly knocked her over and stepped on her chest. Co-founder Blais was also injured in the accident.

The shelter is licenced by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries and inspections over the terminal threesome years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture institute no violations.

Teresa Telecky, administrator of wildlife for Humane Society International, planetary division of Humane Society of the United States, said elephants requirement expanse and the society of another elephants and the shelter is digit of exclusive digit places in the land that crapper substance that.

Atkinson said he's confident that alive job module continue.

"We hit and ever had a twofold mission," Atkinson said. "One is to tending for displeased and needy elephants and the another is to educate people most the pledge of elephants, whether they are in immurement or in the wild."

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Online:

The Elephant Sanctuary: http://www.elephants.com/

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