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Mali, dubbed the “world’s saddest elephant,” has died after decades in captivity at the Manila Zoo
Mali, known as the “world’s saddest elephant,” has died at the Manila Zoo, the city’s mayor Honey Lacuna announced during a news conference on Wednesday. The Asian elephant earned the moniker because she was the only captive elephant in the Philippines and lived alone at the zoo for decades, according to animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has advocated for Mali.
Mali lived at the zoo for about 45 years and caught the attention of Paul McCartney in 2013 when he worked with PETA to raise awareness for the elephant and penned a letter to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III urging the transfer of Mali to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.
At the time, PETA U.K. said Mali “endures intense confinement, loneliness, boredom and isolation” in an area that is a fraction of the size of her natural habitat.
An elephant sanctuary in Thailand was prepared to take Mali in, according to PETA U.K., but she stayed in Manila, where she was the main attraction at the zoo.
Other celebrities, including Pamela Anderson and Jane Goodall joined the effort to “free Mali.”
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At the end of her life, Mali had cancer and was seen rubbing her trunk against a wall, meaning she was in pain, Dr. Heinrich Patrick Peña-Domingo, the chief veterinarian a the zoo, said at the news conference, according to BBC News. Vets gave her antihistamines and vitamins when she was breathing heavily on Tuesday, but she died later that day.
While animal rights activists advocated for Mali to be moved from her isolated home, the zoo argued it was the only place she had known and that vets were providing her with care, BBC News reported.
Mali was transferred to the zoo from Sri Lanka and following her death, PETA Asia urged the country not to send another one of its animals to Manila.
In a statement to CBS News, PETA Asia said Mali, who was nearly 50, died in her “barren concrete pen,” because of “indifference and greed.” The animal rights organization said living in what called solitary confinement is “torture” for female elephants because they naturally spend their lives alongside other female elephants and work together to raise their babies.
“Despite PETA’s repeated warnings, zoo and city officials ignored Mali’s clearly painful foot problems, sentencing her to years of suffering,” PETA Asia’s statement reads. “The Manila Zoo has announced that Mali had cancer that was not detected by their veterinarians until after she died. Due to the fact that there is no elephant expert in the country, Mali was never provided with routine veterinary care—something she would have been given at the sanctuary PETA was prepared to transfer her to.”
PETA Asia said those who denied Mali proper care and a different home “should be held accountable for their part in allowing Mali’s suffering.”
CBS News has reached out to the Manila Zoo and is awaiting response.
According to U.K.-based conservation charity People’s Trust for Endangerd Species, Asian elephants, who are smaller than their African cousins, have an average lifespan of about 70 years in the wild — in captivity, it’s about 80 years. The oldest Asian elephant in captivity died in 2019 in India at 88 years old, according to a piece credited to the group for BBC Wildlife Magazine.
The Smithsonian National Zoo, however, says despite consistent data, evidence suggests Asian elephants typically live into their mid-50s and median life expectancy for female Asian elephants is 47 years old.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Saturday that would have required new cars to beep at drivers if they exceed the speed limit in an effort to reduce traffic deaths.
California would have become the first to require such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state starting in 2030. The bill would have mandated that vehicles beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph.
The European Union has passed similar legislation to encourage drivers to slow down. California’s proposal would have provided exceptions for emergency vehicles, motorcycles and motorized scooters.
In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations.
The National Highway Traffic Safety “is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates at this time risks disrupting these ongoing federal assessments,” the Democratic governor said.
Opponents, including automotive groups and the state Chamber of Commerce, said such regulations should be decided by the federal government, which earlier this year established new requirements for automatic emergency braking to curb traffic deaths. Republican lawmakers also said the proposal could make cars more expensive and distract drivers.
The legislation would have likely impacted all new car sales in the U.S., since the California market is so large that car manufacturers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply.
California often throws that weight around to influence national and even international policy. The state has set its own emission standards for cars for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered cars, major automakers soon followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles.
Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto disappointing and a setback for street safety.
“California should have led on this crisis as Wisconsin did in passing the first seatbelt mandate in 1961,” Wiener said in a statement. “Instead, this veto resigns Californians to a completely unnecessary risk of fatality.”
The speeding alert technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS to compare a vehicle’s pace with a dataset of posted limits. If the car is at least 10 mph over, the system emits a single, brief, visual and audio alert.
The proposal would have required the state to maintain a list of posted speed limits, and it’s likely that those would not include local roads or recent changes in speed limits, resulting in conflicts.
The technology has been used in the U.S. and Europe for years. Starting in July, the European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers would be able to turn it off. At least 18 manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding. This was especially a problem in California, where 35% of traffic fatalities were speeding-related — the second highest in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.
Last year the NTSB recommended federal regulators require all new cars to alert drivers when they speed. Their recommendation came after a crash in January 2022, when a man with a history of speeding violations ran a red light at more than 100 mph and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.
