An Entertainment Abuses Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Courtney Scott shares the story of Alice’s escape from her enclosure at the ABQ Biopark and discusses some of the ways in which zoos fail elephants in captivity.

Alice the Elephant Escaped ABQ Biopark in Desperate Attempt to Reach Foliage
From Courtney Scott, IDA In Defense of Animals, idausa.org
June 2026

Photo Credit: In Defense of Animals

This spring, Alice, a 52-year-old Asian elephant, finally succeeded in breaching the steel-welded barrier at ABQ BioPark Zoo to indulge her desire for vegetation not available to her inside her tiny, barren yard. Her time outside was her first and only taste of freedom since she was captured in Asia at 2 years old and shipped to the U.S. to spend 50 years as a slave for entertainment. For 16 years, she was brutally trained to perform tricks in a circus. In 2001, she ended up at the zoo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where her innate desire to forage has never left her.

In the wild, elephants spend up to 20 hours a day foraging on grass and trees, digging up roots, and feasting on dozens of plant varieties. No zoo provides sufficient vegetation inside its elephant exhibits. Elephants would consume it in a matter of days. The inability to forage is yet another deep deprivation elephants face in zoo confinement. ABQ BioPark Zoo is also guilty of risky and dangerous breeding. This is why it landed on our 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants again in 2025. The zoo's reckless breeding has so far resulted in the deaths of four young elephants. Alice's daughter, Rozie, is the mother of all four dead elephants. Three of them contracted the deadly elephant endotheliotropic herpesviruses (EEHV), often seen in zoos with Asian elephants. Despite this onslaught of death, the zoo plans to keep breeding.

Wire-wrapped trees prevent foraging. Photo Credit: In Defense of Animals

Lack of ability to forage is a continual cause of frustration for elephants in zoos across the country. Alice is so far the only elephant to completely break out of her prison yard to sate her hunger for fresh vegetation that elephants crave, although many elephants have endured jolts from electrified fences in their attempt to reach it. The zoo is now being investigated by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) for negligence and welfare infractions of its minimal standards.

Bravo Alice. We salute your indomitable spirit. Your breakout, though temporary, exposed more than lax zoo oversight. More importantly, it revealed the desperate measures elephants will go to in order to forage, as their DNA has programmed them to do for millennia. No zoo can provide elephants with the opportunity to engage in this fundamental behaviour that keeps them mentally and physically healthy. The only way Alice and her zoo mates, Irene, Rozie, and Albert, can live anywhere close to how nature intended is for the ABQ BioPark Zoo to retire them to a sanctuary and finally close the elephant exhibit, as 42 zoos have done.

Photo Credit: In Defense of Animals

Please make calls, sign, and share our alert urging ABQ Biopark to send its elephants to sanctuary.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: June 25, 2026
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