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For some of you, this story and these elephants will be new; for others, you already know and love them, so forgive the repeats. These four lovely elephants are affectionately known as the Mendoza4. They live at the Mendoza Zoo in Argentina, but the zoo agreed to send them to Elephant Sanctuary Brazil. There is a lot that needs to be done before they can arrive, and right now, we are taking another step towards that.

Pocha and Guillermina (mother and daughter) will be the first two elephants to come to sanctuary from the zoo. They are Asian females and will share a habitat with Maia, Rana, Ramba, and Lady, so their area is already built. Kenya’s habitat is still under construction since the two species are kept separately. The female African barn is already built, and fencing is partially done. We need to buy another load of steel to fence in enough area for Kenya to be brought to the sanctuary. We will still have to expand to create a similar habitat to what the female Asian elephants have to be able to offer homes to additional female African elephants. Tamy is, unfortunately, last on the rescue list, since he will also need his own habitat as well. His habitat will have bigger and stronger fences for when males go through musth, and there has not been any construction or fundraising for his area.

Right now, Karissa and Rene are there doing training with Pocha and Guillermina to get them ready for their quarantine. Like Ramba, their quarantine will take place at the zoo. Quarantine includes different testing and treatment, and since the girls didn’t have any training, we have to teach them how to cooperate with what will need to be done in order to bring them to the sanctuary. Since P&G and Tamy have a connected space, he will most likely have to go through quarantine at the same time, so he will need to be trained as well. The first time we sent Karissa to the Mendoza Zoo, she worked mostly with Kenya, so Kenya already has a decent base in regards to training.

There is a lot to their story, and we’re sure there are a lot of questions. Please, please, please, visit their webpage first before asking questions about them. We are spending a lot of time down with the elephants right now, which limits computer time, so we won’t have time to answer questions if the answers can be found at the links below. Besides, you should get to know them; they’re pretty special. Karissa and Rene will be at the zoo for about a month and a half, but P&G will not be coming to the sanctuary at the end of that time. We don’t have a date on them yet-not that anyone wants to hear this, but they still need their import CITES permits. Guillermina was born at the zoo, so her paperwork will be more straightforward.

We will try to do weekly updates with videos or photos and talk about them and their progress. I personally have a soft spot for Tamy. Males have a hard time in captivity, and he is no different. So please know we will do everything in our power to get all four here eventually. But just like all of the other rescues, it takes all of us.

November 5, 2019

PLEASE READ MORE ABOUT THE MENDOZA4 WITH THESE LINKS:

• Mendoza4 Overview Page →
• Pocha & Guillermina’s Page →
• Kenya’s Page →
• Tamy’s Page →
• Construction Progress →