two Honolulu zoo elephants
Free
Mari &
Vaigai
about Free Mari & Vaigai Initiative
Free Mari & Vaigai Initiative is a Hawaii-based, community-driven initiative formed to secure the release of Honolulu Zoo elephants Mari and Vaigai to an accredited sanctuary, end elephant captivity at the Honolulu Zoo, and help advance the broader movement to end elephant captivity in zoos.
Free Mari & Vaigai
to Sanctuary
Mari and Vaigai are two female Asian elephants who have spent decades living in captivity at the Honolulu Zoo in Hawaiʻi. Mari arrived in 1982 and has lived at the zoo for 44 years. Vaigai arrived in 1992 and has spent 34 years there. Together, they have lived through generations of visitors, changes in zoo leadership, and decades of growing scientific understanding about the complex needs of elephants.
In the wild, female Asian elephants live in close-knit family groups, forming lifelong relationships and communicating through touch, sound, and body language. They are highly intelligent, emotionally sensitive animals with remarkable memories and strong social bonds. Their natural lives involve traveling across large landscapes, foraging, exploring, and making choices about how and where they spend their days.
For Mari and Vaigai, life has been confined to the boundaries of a zoo enclosure, far removed from the expansive habitats and social environments that elephants have evolved to inhabit. While their keepers provide daily care, even well-managed zoo environments cannot fully replicate the freedom, movement, and opportunities for natural behavior that elephants need.
After decades in captivity, Mari and Vaigai deserve the opportunity for a different future.
Their story is now at the center of a significant legal case before the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court and a larger conversation about elephant wellbeing, sanctuary, and the growing movement of zoos choosing to end elephant captivity.
Honolulu has an opportunity to join that movement and give Mari and Vaigai a new chapter of life in sanctuary.
The Reality of Elephant Captivity
“To appropriate an elephant’s life to suffer and, ultimately, die in a zoo ‘exhibit’ is inherently cruel. It’s difficult to describe the full extent of the ways in which zoos are a devastating existence for elephants.” – the Weeping Elephant Project
Voices for Change
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be determined by the way it treats its animals.”
“Elephants do not belong in zoos.”
“Transforming the lives of elephants does not begin with legislation alone. It begins when human beings recognize the value of their lives and have the courage to act.”
“If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.”