Re:  “Is the elephant irrelevant in the zoo of the future?,” by Todd Babiak, July 23.

Does the Valley Zoo administration have any Cit Council Can No LOnger credibility left?  A lonely and ailing elephant, who is not allowed to move to a sanctuary because she provides the ‘wow factor’; a future exhibit featuring the polar bear, who, like the elephant, does very poorly in confinement; a plan to bring in more elephants when the zoo has no space for even one of these wide-ranging animals; an administration that dismisses critics because “they have not examined Lucy,” yet refuses to bring in a panel of independent vets to assess Lucy’s condition; an administration who one day says that Lucy is doing well, but the next days says that Lucy is too sick to be moved.

As Todd Babiak so succinctly put it in his excellent column, city council cannot ignore Lucy’s situation any longer.

Lucy isn’t going to hang around for years waiting for action.  Her years are numbered if she remains in a zoo.  Now is the time for Lucy to go to a sanctuary and now is when city council must act.

P J Armstrong