The National Elephant Center

About The National Elephant Center

The National Elephant Center was a 501(c)(3) non-profit conservation organization built on 225 acres near Fellsmere, Florida. It was founded by ten directors drawn from zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and it was created specifically to provide care for African and Asian elephants on behalf of that accredited-zoo network. The center was not itself accredited by the AZA, but it was conceived and run as a collaborative project of AZA member institutions, and it was meant to become the organization's central hub for elephant population management nationwide.

The facility opened in 2013, when a family group of two female and two male elephants arrived from Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park. It closed just three years later, in 2016, after the deaths of three of its elephants. In its short life it never held more than five elephants at a time, and it was never open to the public. Its purpose was institutional rather than touristic: it existed to hold, train around, study, and manage elephants for the roughly 109 AZA-accredited facilities that together cared for the nation's elephant population.

The center was organized around two main built areas — a pair of large barns for housing, and a sprawling outdoor range for movement and enrichment — supplemented by staff housing on site. Everything about the design was aimed at the practical work of population management: moving bulls between facilities, giving elephants somewhere to go during renovations at their home zoos, and testing how individual animals got along in new social groupings.

History

The idea for a national elephant center began in 2004, at an AZA Elephant Management Strategic Planning Meeting that brought together curators, keepers, veterinarians, and members of the Elephant Taxon Advisory Group and Species Survival Plan. For years, professionals working with the roughly 290 elephants then living across AZA-accredited institutions had wanted a shared facility that could offer both short- and long-term solutions to elephant management. Dozens of AZA-accredited zoos donated funding to explore the idea, and a search began for a site.

The first choice was land near Okeechobee, Florida, offered by Waste Management, Inc., adjacent to a certified wildlife habitat area supporting Florida sandhill cranes. The National Elephant Center was formally announced in February 2008 at a ceremony at the Houston Zoo, with groundbreaking expected later that year and elephants expected by 2009. That timeline did not hold. Planners eventually settled on a different site in Fellsmere, Florida, and groundbreaking there took place in April 2012.

The center's first residents, a family group of two female and two male elephants, arrived from Disney's Animal Kingdom in May 2013. Full build-out of the original plan was expected to take up to a decade. Instead, after the first three elephants to live there died, one surviving elephant returned to Disney and another moved to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, and the center ceased operations in 2016.

Exhibits and habitats

The center's site in Fellsmere covered 225 acres. Two barns, one for Asian elephants and one for African elephants, each had capacity for nine animals and were designed to connect through a central hub. Around that hub sat a 10-acre habitat that could be subdivided as elephants' needs changed.

The largest single feature on the property was the Central Elephant Meander, a 50-acre area built from multiple linked landscapes rather than a single enclosure. Paths and trails wound through terrain designed to echo the savannahs and woodlands of the elephants' native ranges, including waterholes, sand dunes, plantings, and scattered browse for the animals to forage.

Animal highlights

The center was built to house both African and Asian elephants, and over its lifetime it held five elephants total. Its first group, arriving in 2013 from Disney's Animal Kingdom, was a family unit of two females and two males. After three of those elephants died, the two survivors were relocated rather than replaced, one back to Disney's Animal Kingdom and one to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, and the center closed without ever expanding its population further.

Conservation and programs

Beyond direct animal care, the center's mission had several strands. It was meant to serve as a centralized training facility for keepers, veterinarians, and other elephant professionals, offering hands-on instruction in nutrition, preventative health care, enrichment, training, and techniques such as artificial insemination. It also aimed to support elephant research into reproduction, memory, communication, visual acuity, nutritional needs, and disease, with findings intended to help both zoo-based and wild elephant populations.

The center described itself as a resource for the broader elephant conservation community, supporting collaboration among the AZA's Elephant Taxon Advisory Group and Species Survival Plan, field scientists, government agencies, and organizations such as the International Elephant Foundation. It also framed public education as part of its mission, even though the facility itself was not open to visitors, by supporting education programs at accredited zoos that reach millions of visitors each year. At the time it was operating, the center said it provided leadership or assistance to more than 85 elephant research programs addressing issues affecting elephants in the wild.

Planning your visit

The National Elephant Center was never open to the public. It functioned as a working facility for AZA-accredited zoos rather than a visitor attraction, and it permanently ceased operations in 2016. There is nothing to plan: the site no longer operates as an elephant facility, and no hours, admission, or visitor services exist to check.