Further, numerous zoos keep elephants and other large animals healthy on far less terrain than that commonly used in Africa - not in small cages, but in large natural habitats varying from 100 to 700 acres. Adequate food supplies should present less of a problem for privately owned elephants than for publicly owned animals. The ranchers, zookeepers, and private-sector environmentalists who own elephants will find it in their interest to provide the needed quantities of food to keep their elephants healthy. Finally, there is the argument that it is extremely expensive, if not simply impossible, to fence in elephants. But this, too, fails.
Zoos manage to keep their charges from wandering from their assigned habitats.
It is difficult at first to imagine the elephant in the role of a barnyard animal because it does not give milk, lay eggs, or provide wool. Nor do we eat elephant meat. But the highly valuable tusks alone, to say nothing of the leather, would provide incentives to preserve and protect the elephant. Owners might also exploit tourists' interest in elephants through picture-taking safaris, controlled hunting, and sightseeing as a further means of paying for the animals' upkeep. Let us consider one last objection.