The three are, the Dallas Zoo, the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kan and the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb.
Six elephants will join the four already living in the Dallas Zoo’s Giants of the Savanna habitat.
The Dallas Zoo expects more than double its herd of elephants because of the partnership the two other zoos have with the country.
The elephants will come from two country parks, where an overpopulation has stripped the already drought-ridden parks, depriving other species, like endangered rhinos of food.
Elephants were stripping the park’s 900-year-old trees of their bark and eating grass faster than it could grow, leaving it barren. The black rhino were running out of food.
According to business wire press release, local government decided it needed to either relocate or kill 18 elephants in order to sustain its parks.
“We see these animals in Swaziland that are basically in a dire situation,” said Gregg Hudson, president of the Dallas Zoo, “and it’s important for us to reach out and ask ‘Is there a way we can incorporate them into what we’re doing here?”
The relocation must first be approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but zoo officials expect the agency to approve its application within the next 30 days.
Hudson said the zoo has extra property on the west side of Marsalis Avenue where the new animals would be cared for until next spring, when they can be added to the Giants exhibit. Officials plan to have the elephants on the property by the end of the year.
Lynn Kramer, vice president of animal operations and welfare at the Zoo, said poaching was a huge concern in Africa, though not in Swaziland.
“Poaching is non-existent in Swaziland,” he said. “Rangers patrol the park areas with machine guns and guard dogs.”
Kramer and Hudson said the Dallas Zoo would use the elephants to teach about poaching and to mitigate its effects through breeding, providing the zoo with elephants for years to come.
“There is no better place than our zoo for these animals,” Hudson said.
“It’s a safe haven for them.”
“It’s a little bit of a Martian landscape where the elephants have been,” said Henry Doorly Executive Director Dennis Pate, who visited the park last year.
“The only greenery that’s left are some of the plants that nobody wants to eat because they taste horrible.”
Officials at the Swaziland Big Game Parks had already sterilised every bull elephant of birthing age and were trucking in hay. The elephants couldn’t be relocated nearby because poaching, habitat loss and elephant-human conflicts were too big a barrier.
Each zoo is taking six of the park’s elephants – one male and five females.
The three zoos also have committed to devote about $1m to black rhino conservation.
The three zoos have filed permit requests with the US Fish & Wildlife Service and Swaziland wildlife authorities to bring the elephants to the United States. They’re expected to arrive in late autumn or winter.
In Omaha, the elephants will be housed in a new 2 695m² elephant family quarters, which is in the final stages of construction in the zoo’s far southwest corner. The building is the largest of the zoo’s $73m African Grasslands project, costing about $15m. ”The elephants will spend a few weeks in quarantine before going on display,” Pate said.