From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "A 9,000-Pound Fish Out of Water, Alone in Alaska Since 2002" (Anchorage Journal, Jan. 9):

Friends of Maggie, an Anchorage citizens' group, has worked to persuade the Alaska Zoo to relocate its solitary female African elephant, Maggie, to a warm climate and the company of other elephants.

Four superb institutions are willing and able to give Maggie a spacious home with other female African elephants in a mild climate.

Female elephants are one of the most socially needy and complex land mammals on the planet. Outside captivity, they never live alone, and never live in the sub-Arctic.

Maggie could live 40 more years. Surely she deserves a better future than 40 years on a treadmill in a cement barn in Alaska.

Penelope Wells
Exec. Dir., Friends of Maggie
Anchorage, Jan. 10, 2005