Elephant Eden
Elephant Eden was designed to provide a natural and spacious environment for elephants to foster their physical and mental well-being.
Elephant Eden is the largest elephant facility in the UK and Northern Europe and was officially opened by HRH Princess Anne over a decade ago.
The world leading elephant facility covers an area of 20 acres with a wide range of state-of-the-art features.
Noah's Ark Zoo Farm invested £2 million to create a specialised heated elephant house and extensive field environments, focused on enriching the daily life of each elephant.
What's inside?
The heated indoor portion of the habitat has been carefully designed to allow the elephants to move freely as a group. Although it can also be split into four separate pens with ample space if necessary.
Each area inside the barn is floored with locally-sourced deep sand and there are large mounds for the elephants to sleep against. This provides a surface much more comfortable for the elephants and promotes good foot and joint health.
Elephant Eden is fitted with CCTV designed to monitor and record any day and night time activities from interactions with other elephants to sleeping patterns.
There are three dedicated training areas in Elephant Eden, each to access a different part of the elephants bodies. Along with these training areas, Elephant Eden it is fitted with an elephant weighing scales, allowing the keeper team to track the elephants weight everyday.
Our elephants have 24hr access to the entire Elephant Eden facility.
What's Outside?
Just like the inside habitat, four of the outdoor areas include deep sand flooring as well as 3 large grass paddocks that allow the elephants to graze. There are five manual hoists that allow the keeper team to deliver food and enrichment, this can encourage trunk, neck and back muscle exercise and avoid competition.
The willow field is the largest of the paddocks and was opened in 2022 to the elephants. This paddock has a different species of grass and is kept at a different length for grazing. The main feature of this paddock is the two-acre plantation. This promotes natural foraging, behaviours and shelter.
Noah's Ark Zoo Farm is the first protected contact facility to provide this opportunity to their elephants within an enclosure.
Elephant Welfare
Noah's Ark Zoo Farm is committed to providing the highest level of animal care for it's elephants. As a Zoo, we regularly contribute data to the Elephant Welfare Project that has been created by the team at the University Of Nottingham.
Using a tool called the Elephant Behavioural Welfare Assessment Total (EBWAT), routine behavioural assessments are conducted to monitor the welfare of Shaka, Janu, Sutton and Uli over a period of three days every three months, totalling four weekly assessments over the year. Nocturnal activity is also recorded 6pm until 8am on one of the observation days.
This data has been collected for the past 9 years and has helped the Zoo and scientists to identify changes to improve the welfare of their elephants over time.
