VIRGINIA
An elephant left a troubled zoo. Advocates fear her life got worse.
Asha, an African elephant, spent decades at Virginia’s Natural Bridge zoo, which was raided last year on charges of animal cruelty.



Asha at Natural Bridge Zoo in September 2023. Asha spent years giving rides to visitors at the private zoo in Virginia. (Robin Vitulle/Free All Captive Elephants, Inc. )

By Kyle Swenson
July 19, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

Last year it seemed like Asha was finally heading for the storybook retirement she deserved. ... The now-41-year-old elephant had lived a bruising, lonely life. She was plucked from the African Savannah when she was a baby, then spent the majority of her days at the troubled Natural Bridge Zoo in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. There she gave hundreds of rides a day, and allegedly lived chained up in a dirty barn, swaying to “soothe herself and relieve boredom and stress,” a witness would say.

Animal advocates spent years calling for her release. Some went undercover with hidden cameras to film her conditions. They filed complaints with state authorities. A billboard went up calling for her release. And in December 2023, when Virginia officials announced they had raided Natural Bridge and confiscated hundreds of animals, they thought their campaign had worked.

It hadn’t. In June, Natural Bridge posted on Facebook that Asha had been “retired to a sanctuary.” But records show that days prior to the raid, Asha was moved to Two Tails Ranch, another privately-owned zoo in Florida that had been investigated by state authorities and been the subject of numerous complaints by animal rights groups. ... Advocates are now worried she’s gone from one bad situation to another.

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Asha at Natural Bridge Zoo in September 2023. Asha was moved to Two Tails Ranch, a private facility outside of Gainesville, Fla. (Robin Vitulle/Free All Captive Elephants, Inc. )

“Had she been on [the] property, she would have been seized in the raid and probably now would be at an actual elephant sanctuary,” said Robin Vitulle, president of Free All Captive Elephants (FACE), a national nonprofit that advocates for the release of elephants from zoos and circuses. “It’s devastating that she was not on property.”

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By Kyle Swenson
Kyle Swenson is a reporter with The Washington Post's social issues team. He previously worked at the New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Cleveland Scene. He is the author of "Good Kids, Bad City." Twitter https://twitter.com/kyletalking