When Denmark’s parliament passed a law in 2018 banning elephants from circuses and zoos, it wasn’t exactly specific about what to do with the ones that remained, other than ponying up €1.6 million to buy the last four from their owners.
The solution turned out to be to build them a retirement home at a safari park on the island of Lolland, south of Copenhagen, where the family that has owned the Knuthenborg estate since the 1600s was already operating an open-air safari park that the elephants could be added to.
Christoffer Knuth, the 13th-generation owner of the land had opened the park in the 1960s, on land that previous generations had remodeled to resemble English landscape gardens. He told The Telegraph (UK) that “The politicians wanted a Danish solution to the problem, so we constructed a 14-hectare fenced enclosure to give them as natural life as possible in their retirement.”
It’s not exactly a chore for Knuth: He also operates a set of ‘glamping’ tents on the property for those who want to come and watch the wildlife.
