NYC NOW - What's Next for the Last Elephant in New York City?

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Happy the Elephant lived at the Bronx Zoo for nearly 50 years, where she was beloved by generations of New Yorkers, and was also at the center of a landmark legal battle over whether an elephant could be granted the same rights as a person. WNYC reporter Walter Wuthmann joins us to trace Happy's life and investigate what comes next for Patty, the last elephant left at the Bronx Zoo. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis News via Getty Images Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. Happy's life is to be characterized as just one injustice after another. Happy the elephant was a legend at the Bronx Zoo. And if you ask me, she's become an even bigger legend in her death. On today's episode, we look into the elephant at the center of the most significant animal rights case of the 21st century. And what happens to the last remaining elephant at the Bronx? Zoom. We'll get to that soon. But first, here's what's happening in New York City.

City data reviewed by WNYC shows more than 8,000 New York City households were evicted in the first half of the year. The monthly eviction rate decreased compared to the same time last year, but anti-poverty advocates say the thousands of evictions reveal the depths of the city's affordability crisis. Reiser Rodriguez leads the Citizens Committee for Children of New York. She says evictions lead to homelessness. That means more families with children having to turn to shelter as a last resort. Last week, New York City officials approved a new rental assistance program to help some tenants avoid eviction. The program will cover some tenants with low incomes who live in rent-stabilized

apartments. The Lennox Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side joins Carnegie Hill and Yorkville as areas where city health officials are investigating a Legionnaire's outbreak. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Alistair Martin has been warning residents of the disease. Things like cough, shortens of breath, fatigue, flu-like symptoms. These are all triggers to call your doctor and to make sure to get evaluated. Legionnaires is a type of pneumonia caused by bacteria that breeds in warm water. Health officials do say that the tap water in the affected neighborhoods is safe to drink and wash with.

At least 14 people have now been confirmed for Legionnaires. You may recall a similar outbreak in Harlem last summer, which infected 114 people and killed seven. The city says no deaths have been reported so far this year. New York City isn't the only place dealing with a housing crisis. Over the Hudson River, lawmakers in New Jersey are fighting to chip away at its housing crisis by turning vacant malls into new homes. Senator Troy Singleton introduced a bill that would let developers turn some retail centers and office parks into housing alongside retail office or recreation space. To be clear,

we're talking about housing on the malls campus, not inside the actual mall. It's part of the success of brick and mortar stores these days is to get your clientele living right nearby. They're more likely to come through. That's Zoe Baldwin. She's vice president of state programs for the Regional Plant Association. She says the practice of turning ghost malls into housing, isn't as common as it should be. But she says there are a couple hurdles. State leaders and developers will have to jump through if they want to make it happen. The first hurdle is often local zoning.

Sometimes the area is just not zoned properly. But then a lot of the pushback also comes from this kind of general pushback against housing that we see across the country. Zoe explains that people want cheaper housing, but there are others who don't want to welcome those in need into their community. They push back against housing coming to their community. community. And so that's going to be something that we're really going to have to work through to meet this moment right now. Zoe says New Jersey is already seeing a similar conversion at the Monmouth Mall in Monmouth County. She says developers have added housing to the dead mall,

making it a mixed-use building, which she says helps bring foot traffic back to the area. Zoe adds that most of the vacant malls have existing transit service, which she says is a plus. So you're not only making an improvement in the community, but you're also revitalizing. some transit service, which is fantastic. Zoe hopes the bill makes it through the legislative process, but says the responses have been mixed. I think most of the legislature is very, very aware of the housing crisis, but at the same time, they do get pushback from mayors. And so this bill has kind of moved and fits and starts, but we just need to see it get through the full body. And that's going to be the lift in the coming months once we come back after summer recess. Zoe Baldwin is vice president

of state programs for the Regional Plan Association. Still ahead, a legendary elephant in New York City has left quite the legacy since her death. More on that after the break. Welcome back. Have you heard of Happy the Elephant? Happy was a New York City legend. She was an Asian elephant born in 1971,

and she lived at the Bronx Zoo from 1977 all the way up until this May. Some sad news from the Bronx Zoo, their 55-year-old elephant Happy, who made headlines a few years ago, was euthanized. Now, this isn't an obituary, and I never saw Happy in real life. But a quick YouTube search shows me a good number of videos about Happy, and people's moments of joy catching the sight of her from the Bronx Zoo Monorail. The next two animals are impossible to miss. We have on this end of the enclosure, Happy, the Elephant. All right, now we are looking at Happy the elephant. And you guys will see her in just a moment, okay?

See? She sit with her trunk. Hi, Happy. You'll see her right. Hi, Happy. Hi, Happy. She was beloved by generations of children and family, and part of that love was because Happy wasn't an ordinary zoo elephant. She was at the center of what legal experts called the most significant

animal rights case of the 21st century, and her life and death leaves a lot of questions of what will happen to the last remaining elephant at the Bronx Zoo. WMYC's Walter Woodman has been on the elephant beat for this story, and he's here to walk us through it all. Walter, I didn't know we had a zoo beat. We do now. I happily welcome you to the show. Thanks, Renee. I understand you haven't seen Happy the elephant in person. No, I just missed her. I actually went to the zoo the day after they announced that she died, and appropriately, it was raining. All right, I am walking into the Bronx Zoo, kind of a cloudy, overcast day. The guy did not talk at all about Happy, or the fact that the zoo just had to euthanize her. I did find some of Happy's fans who were hoping to see her,

like Kate Toff and her mother Joyce. So you'd seen her before? And you were hoping to see her today? We were hoping we didn't know she passed away. That's really sad. It's terrible. Yeah, no, we We liked her. I was walking all over the zoo trying to find people who remembered Happy. And I did. I found people and people who'd been hoping to see her that day. And obviously they couldn't. Walter, can you just bring us back to Happy's beginning and tell us how she ended up in the Bronx Zoo?

Well, from archival material that I've read and from court records, we know that Happy was probably born to a wild herd of elephants in the early 1970s in Thailand. land. She was captured as a baby along with six other calves and sold to a safari park in California. And I'll just say from the methods of trapping elephants at this time, it's probably likely that her mother was killed to separate the babies. Okay. Happy and her siblings were named after the seven dwarves from Snow White. So Happy and Grumpy and sleepy. They were sent to different circuses and zoos across the United States. Eventually in 1977, Happy and her sister Grumpy were purchased in Brumpy. We're purchased in Brumpy. brought to the Bronx Zoo here in New York. And Happy was quickly a real crowd favorite. Eventually, she stood about eight feet tall. She weighed 8,500 pounds. Zoo staff said she had a really hearty appetite and was really food motivated.

Her favorite treats were watermelons and strawberries. And then personality-wise, even though her name was happy, her keeper said she was apparently a bit shy and reserved. And ironically, it was her sister Grumpy, who was the more gregarious and outgoing one. But here's where there's kind of a sad turn in the story. In 2002, two other elephants at the Bronx Zoo named Patty and Maxine, they actually attacked Grumpy and they had to put Grumpy down because her wounds were so bad. Oh, no. So Happy was separated from the other elephants by offense after that.

And Happy was sad. She probably was pretty upset to be, you know, in close proximity to these two other elephants who had done something so violent to her sister. And she was all alone. Yes, and not to pile on, but the zoo did try to bring in a younger elephant named Sammy to be her new companion. And then Sammy also died of a medical complication. It is, you know, it is kind of a sad turn of events. Yeah, for sure. So a few years after this, the Bronx Zoo announced that they would stop acquiring new elephants altogether.

And they were going to phase out the exhibit over time as their elephants died. It was sort of a bold move for a zoo to announce this change at the time. Elephants are among the most popular animals for visitors to see. A lot of people go to the zoo to see elephants and they buy the t-shirts and they get the stuff's animals. So losing elephants entirely, it could be a real blow to revenue. How did she end up on the national radar? Well, in 2005, something really remarkable happened. There was this group of scientists who were studying mirror self-recognition in animals.

Researchers had observed this phenomenon in chimpanzees and in dolphins, but experts wanted to test it in elephants as well. And I caught up with the lead author of this study. Her name's Diana Reese, and I caught up with her on this kind of scratchy landline from her home in Connecticut. And she specializes in these mirror recognition studies. So that's where an animal is now using the mirror as a tool to view themselves. They understand that that reflection is their own, and it's a test of visual self-awareness.

So Reese and her team put an elephant-sized, mirror in the exhibit. We made a jumbo mirror that was an eight-foot-by-eight-foot mirror. They set up cameras on the roof of the elephant yard and inside the mirror itself, and then they sat back and watched. And did you, would you watch some of it live? Or was it all, was it all you? Oh, no, we were live.

Oh, no, we were there. We were there the whole time. All three elephants, that's Happy, Patty, and Maxine. They were really curious about the mirror. So they approached it. They investigated it. They moved in and out of the frame. But here's where things get really wild.

The researchers, they painted marks on the elephant's forehead. One in white ink and one in invisible ink. This is called the mark test, and it's sort of like the final boss in mirror self-recognition. So after receiving her marks, Happy went up to the mirror and started touching the white X on her own face with her trunk. Did you see Happy, though, touching the white mark live? Did you sort of see that real time and you realized, like, oh, wow, this is happening? Yeah, yeah, you know, your heart beats faster. It's so exciting.

I mean, it's like I'm sure if you have a dog and, you know, the dog does something amazing. And it's like, oh, my God. And you don't want to overinterpret, but, you know, when you have a study set up and you see it, it's very exciting. All right. So happy taps herself on the mirror. What does this signify? So to pass the mirror recognition, Jess, you have to notice that your movements are matching up with that other animal in the mirror.

So when you waggle your elephant ear, that other elephant waggles its ear, when you raise your elephant foot, that other elephant raises its foot. And you realize, oh, that's not another elephant. That's me. Yeah. So it's showing memory. It's showing critical thinking. And this kind of selfhood, you know, I am a self that I am recognizing in the mirror. You know, I never doubt it the intellect of elephants, but it seems like they're smarter than we think.

They're really, really intelligent and happy, just empiric. proved how extraordinary they really are. It made her a global celebrity. You know, there was glossy magazine articles about her. She was all over the internet. And it got the attention of a pretty influential animal rights group called the Non-Human Rights Project. And I spoke to their executive director, Christopher Barry. Happy's life is to be characterized as just one injustice after another. The organization describes itself as kind of an ACLU for animals. They filed court cases all over the country trying to free chimpanzees and elephants from captivity, but they weren't really having any success.

They felt happy was the ideal client. There was the mere self-recognition experiment. There was the fact of her name, which is quite iconic and memorable. Yeah. And then she also had this really sympathetic life story. So the non-human rights project, they come up with this novel legal argument. They argue that happy is an autonomous being who is being unjustly confined. And they filed for her release on the writ of habeas corpus.

That's the foundational legal concept that dates all the way back to the time of the Magna Carta. And it's the basic idea that the government has to prove in court why someone is being held in custody. In Latin, it literally means you shall have the body. Walter, can we back up a bit? Because I thought habeas corpus applies to humans only. Well, no, not humans, persons. Oh. One doesn't have to be a human to be a person under the law.

A ship can be a person. A corporation can be a person. And in fact, animals can be persons for certain purposes. So that's Harvard Law School professor and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. She reported on the happy case for years. And she says that the non-human rights project actually presented some strong arguments. And while a state Supreme Court judge in the Bronx denied the initial petition, the legal fight just kept going and it ends all the way up at New York.

New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals. What was that legal fight? What was the argument? Were they going to release her back to the streets of the Bronx? Were they bringing her back to Thailand? Well, they argued Happy had a fundamental right to bodily liberty. But because she lived in captivity, essentially her whole life, she couldn't be safely released back into the wild.

So they proposed an elephant sanctuary and they presented a couple options where she would have more room to roam and to socialize with other elephants. Okay. So shortly after the Non-Human Rights Project filed this petition, a county judge issued a habeas corpus order on behalf of Happy and scheduled a hearing to see whether or not she should be released from confinement. And these were the first habeas proceedings in the United States for an elephant. Number 52 in the matter of the non-human rights project against James J. Brehne, Director of the Bronx Zoo and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Counsel? Yes.

Good afternoon, your honors, and may it please the court. Here's non-human rights project attorney Monica Miller, making her argument to the court. And there's no question, at least based on the five unrebutted scientific expert reports, that this is no place for an elephant, and these two sanctuaries would be as close to freeing her as possible. And so from a legal standpoint, if it would make a difference if she was completely set free or not? So does that mean that I couldn't keep a dog? I mean, dogs can memorize words. And I think most people who have dogs

or any kind of domesticated pet that way would say that they feel there's a special connection and a bond. They're like their family, as I think you pointed out in the brief. If I had a dog, I could leave property to them. So why isn't then what you're arguing for endangering these kinds of human-animal relationships? Well, we don't have the evidence about dogs that we have about elephants right now. And I don't know when or if we ever will. What we have

about elephants right here right now. There were some pretty intense arguments in the courtroom. Attorneys for the non-human rights project in the Bronx Zoo argued before a panel of seven judges, the courtroom was packed. And this was back in 2022, so kind of still emerging from COVID. COVID, yeah. You know, people in masks and taking precaution. But a lot of media and interested observers, you know, wanting to know what was going to happen to happy. There was this really striking moment where Judge Jenny Rivera asked Ken Manning, who is the Bronx Zoo's attorney, about the potential ripple effects of this case. Isn't a decision from the court about an expansion of something like the Great

Rit, always going to have ripple effects moving forward? I wouldn't call this a ripple, Your Honor, to take animals that have never been subject to rights of people, given the social compact that forms the basis for our federal and state constitutions and all the laws that we promulgate to effectuate those two documents, it puts them in the same category as people, which we oppose. The court ultimately ruled against the non-human rights project in a five to two decision. They warned that, quote, a judicial determination that non-human animals are legal persons would lead to a labyrinth of questions that common law processes are ill-equipped to answer.

They also said, quote, the decisions of whether and how, to integrate other species into legal constructs designed for humans is a matter better suited to the legislative process. So they're saying basically, don't ask us to declare that elephants have these rights talk to your local politician. That's right. Okay, so we know activists wanted happy move to an elephant sanctuary, but elephants are a major draw to the zoo. We mentioned that earlier. What did the folks at the Bronx Zoo make of all of this? Well, I spoke to the zoo's current director. His name is Craig Piper.

I'm the interim executive vice president for zoos and aquariums and director of the Bronx Zoo for the Wildlife Conservation Society. We like to say our big, hairy, audacious goal, our be hagg is to protect 50% of the planet's biodiversity. Beehag? Yep, be hag. Big hairy, audacious goal. And that's official jargon? He says the whole lawsuit surrounding Happy was really disappointing. I just feel that they were using Happy as a pawn instead of really caring about elephant welfare. In his view, the non-human rights project case was about trying to set a legal precedent,

rather than actually trying to help Happy as an individual elephant. When they first filed the lawsuit, they said it was nothing to do with the care and welfare of Happy the Elephant, that it was really just testing this legal theory. And then in court filings, they actually tried to get the judge to hold an injunction. against us that says you can't move happy. Well, in the public, what they're saying at that time is tell the Bronx Zoo to move happy. She has to go to a sanctuary and give us money. So it really, in our minds, was a fundraising angle to really press a different agenda.

He also points out that the nonprofit is now looking to prove this legal precedent with other elephants across the country. So there could be an elephant freed through habeas corpus in the future, but we know it's not going to be happy. Unfortunately. And that's because Happy died. She died on Tuesday, May 26th. She'd been missing from the monorail exhibit for some weeks. There was some chatter, people wondering if she was okay. And it turns out she'd been having medical problems.

In a statement after her death, the zoo said that Happy's kidney and liver were failing. Well, she was pretty old. She was getting pretty old for an elephant, and the veterinary team said they made the, quote, hard and heartbreaking decision to euthanize her. We made the decision that happy, it was time for the end of her life. We do that as respectfully as we possibly can. And although she and Patty didn't share a lot of time together, we know that elephants will mourn for others in their group.

And so we gave Patty an opportunity to actually reach out and touch happy and spend some time with her. She chose not to. She chose to look, and that's her choice. Remember that Patty did attack Happy Sister Grumpy, so there may have been some lingering bad blood there. Yeah. And now that Happy's gone, though,

Patty's officially the one elephant left at the Brock Zoo. You know, I can't help but think about Happy's legacy. And even though it doesn't sound like Happy and Patty were the best of friends, what Happy's life can mean for Paddy's. you know, what about that promise the Bronx Zoo made to phase out the elephant program there? Well, I asked him directly about that. Now, there is this question of Patty, the last elephant in the zoo. And I was reading through the AZA regulations, and they think it's not best for a female elephant to be alone.

I imagine that's something you're thinking about. So just talk to me about that thinking, and if there is consideration of moving her. He acknowledged the announcement that they'd made in 2006 and said they're deciding now what's best for Patty. As you can imagine, there are a lot of risks in making a move for an elephant that's 57 years old when the median life expectancy is about 45. He told me that there's actually this large elephant sanctuary in Tennessee that the team visited recently.

And they're actually considering sending Patty there. There are a lot of risks, though, involving that. You know, it's a lot of travel and logistics to ship a nearly 60-year-old massive elephant across state lines. it could be very stressful. It could be bad for her health. And then there's also all these vets and zookeepers at the Bronx Zoo that have been working with her for years, that know her personality, that know her health history.

You know, it may be a loss for her to lose those things. On the other hand, she'd have acres of space to roam, potentially other elephants to socialize with, and it might just be a softer landing for her final year. So these are the things that they're weighing against each other right now. So it's an active and ongoing discussion. Yes, it definitely is because we want to make sure that we do the best thing for Patty. Well, we'll see what happens. We will.

Hoping the best for Patty. We do. That's WNYC's Walter Woodman. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. See you next time.