believe me glyn, many of the points you have brought up are very valid and i have thought them many times myself. logically, i can think of no reason why none of these options were explored, especially the open range concept and pooling the zoo communities elephants together, other than commercial reasons.

i may be able to shed some light on some of the questions or points that you have made.

firstly the general scientific consensus is that their are only 4 subspecies of asian elephant - the sumatran, sri lankan, mainland and newly classified bornean. the sri lankan no doubt has it's genes diluted after hundreds of years of indian elephants being taken there and interbreeding with the local animals. under this classification ALL elephants from mainland asia are one subspecies elephas maximus indicus. therfore, the breeding perth and melbourne animals, who were all sourced from malaysia are the same race as the imported thai animals. even should the mainland animals be sub-dived, certainly animals from thailand and the neighbouring malay penninsular are one and the same.

the zoo's will be breeding a pure subspecies of elephant.

as for breeding african elephants, an email i sent the NSW zoo board a year or so ago was responded with a "no plans" on the idea. as far as i know they gave up when faced with the prospect of importing another bull. the cows are now too old to breed anyway.

melbourne zoo's new elephant exhibit is much larger and (in my opinion) much better designed than what i have seen of the new taronga one. it has all the right facilities and the right concept for breeding elephants, i just don't think any city zoo can provide enough space for a herd of the worlds largest terrestrial animal.