WILL RUBY BE BROUGHT BACK AT ALL? CITY QUERY INTO ELEPHANT'S NEXT MOVE ANGERS ACTIVISTS.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

Although Ruby the elephant is set to return to Los Angeles this month from a 17-month exile in Tennessee, city officials are quietly looking to move the 9,000-pound pachyderm to another city.

Although Mayor James Hahn has ordered Ruby be returned to the Los Angeles Zoo, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has filed documents in court saying officials are searching for alternative zoos where the African elephant ``may be better suited.''

The action angers animal-rights activists, who claim that Ruby's confined quarters at the Knoxville Zoo and her separation from Gita, her longtime elephant companion in Los Angeles, have jeopardized her health.

``It's outrageous. It's absolutely outrageous,'' said Gretchen Wyler, vice president of the U.S. Humane Society Hollywood office in Encino, which has backed a lawsuit to bring the 43-year-old elephant home.

``Here we go again: Ruby is being sent to another zoo, when we have a nice facility with a great (climate) and her old friend, Gita. It shows the arrogance of the (American Zoo and Aquarium Association) and the zoo to override the mayor's directive.''

Ruby was sent to Knoxville in summer 2003 to serve as an ``auntie'' for a breeding program there, but she soon became quarrelsome and a social outcast among other African elephants. Animal experts and activists said Ruby showed signs of severe stress at being isolated in a small concrete pad away from Gita, her Asian elephant friend of 16 years in Los Angeles.

In July 2004, Hahn ordered the city-owned elephant returned to her home in Griffith Park. Plans call for her to be shipped back in secret sometime this month.

But in an October court hearing over Ruby's status, the city filed documents saying zoo officials and AZA's Elephant Taxon Advisory Group are considering other accredited zoos.

Hahn's office maintains it is only right to consider all possible options.

``Ruby's good. Everybody wants Ruby back to Los Angeles. Ruby's coming home,'' said Sahar Moridani, a spokeswoman for the mayor. ``But if someday there can be another option for a better home for her, then it is our responsibility to explore that option.''

Los Angeles Zoo officials, who have long maintained that Ruby may be better served by other zoos, say she doesn't fit in with the facility's new focus on showing and breeding Asian elephants.

They have also said that the friendship between Ruby and Gita has been dramatically ``overplayed.''

A $12 million pachyderm exhibit is now under construction and is expected to be completed by 2006. In the meantime, Ruby will join the zoo's three other elephants - two Asian and one African - in temporary quarters.

``We're just keeping our options open. We're looking out for the best for Ruby,'' said zoo General Manager John Lewis. ``For her own social well-being, if we can get her into an African (herd), the better.

``And for educational purposes, it's better to keep Africans together, and Asians together, so people can see the difference.''

Zoo officials say that Tara, an aging African female elephant, will not be moved because of her temperament.

Activists for Ruby's return say the city may hedge on its pledge.

``The bottom line is, who the hell is running this city, the mayor or the zoo?'' asked Melya Kaplan, founder of Venice Animal Allies, an animal- rights group that has also backed the complaint.

``Hahn made a directive which was good for the elephant, good for the taxpayers, it's what the citizens of L.A. want. We don't want the mayor of Los Angeles to be a flip-flopper.''

Dana Bartholomew, [phone]

dana.bartholomew(at)dailynews.com