A New Look at Joyce’s Life at Six Flags

For the first time, World Animal Protection has obtained aerial imagery of Joyce at Six Flags Great Adventure, allowing us to see the full picture of her troubling living conditions. With this new perspective, we can now see her full space in context, giving us a much better sense of how limited her environment really is. 

Her enclosure shows barren land, with sparse vegetation and little to no visible enrichment. For a highly intelligent and active animal, this environment severely limits her opportunities to engage in natural behaviors.  

This imagery also gives us a clearer sense of the true size of her enclosure. Using Google Maps, her enclosure measures approximately 1 acre of space, which is smaller than the size of a traditional American football field. For comparison, Elephant Refuge North America, a sanctuary for elephants, offers roughly 850 acres of land for rescued elephants to roam freely.

What makes her small enclosure especially troubling for Joyce is that African elephants have one of the largest home ranges of any animal, often walking up to 40 miles each day, and naturally spend much of that time investigating, exploring, and foraging. Without the ability to roam freely for long distances, elephants can develop physical and behavioral problems. 

To make matters worse, Joyce will be placed in the small barn adjacent to her current enclosure for roughly four months to escape the winter cold, since African elephants are not adapted to withstand prolonged cold temperatures. This means her already limited environment will shrink even further, leaving Joyce and the other elephants with far less space to move and explore.

It’s time for Six Flags to do the right thing and move Joyce and the other elephants to an accredited sanctuary where they can explore hundreds of acres of natural habitat and finally have the space and freedom they deserve. 

Visit FreeJoyce.org to learn more or access our Activist Toolkit for ways you can take action.