When Natural Bridge Zoo moved Asha the elephant to Florida, officials there said the transfer violated state law

On Dec. 1, 2023, the Natural Bridge Zoo moved its lone elephant to a zoo in Florida.

The unexpected move — Asha had been one of the main attractions at the Rockbridge County facility — has long prompted speculation that the Natural Bridge Zoo had been tipped off to an impending raid by the state attorney general’s office.

That raid came five days later, on Dec. 6, and resulted in the state seizing the zoo’s animals as part of an animal abuse investigation that has now produced indictments of five people, including the zoo’s elephant handler and the Virginia veterinarian who signed the required paperwork for Asha to be transported out of state.

Meanwhile, Asha’s transfer set off a previously unreported controversy in Florida: The Florida veterinarian who was involved in the elephant’s transport was cited for breaking that state’s law in not getting the required permit. He also claimed he didn’t have time to get a permit because Asha’s condition was a “veterinary emergency,” but examinations of the elephant soon after her arrival revealed no health problems, which has further fueled speculation (sometimes hinted at in court arguments in Rockbridge County Circuit Court) that she was hustled out of Virginia. 

Those details and others that follow are contained in reports filed with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, which the Florida-based animal rights group Free All Captive Elephants obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and recently turned over to Cardinal News. The group said it was prompted to do so by Cardinal’s reporting on the ongoing Natural Bridge Zoo case and the fact that the zoo’s former elephant is back in the news.

In July of this year, Asha was unexpectedly moved again, this time to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. The details of how the elephant came to be moved again have not been publicly disclosed; the Elephant Sanctuary, as well as relevant state and federal agencies, all say they can’t comment because of ongoing investigations. The extent of these investigations is also unclear — whether they are limited to Natural Bridge Zoo or involve other facilities — although reporting by the British newspaper The Independent suggests they are wider than just Natural Bridge.

Meanwhile, those Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission documents offer more insight into Asha’s initial move and legal issues related to it. Here’s the timeline.

Asha’s move to Florida was called an ‘emergency’ medical situation, but no emergency appears to have existed

On Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, at 9:38 p.m., Florida veterinarian Mark Wilson sent an email to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission with the subject line “Veterinary Emergency Animal Import.”

The email said that “for over a decade” Wilson had performed an annual physical on Asha at the Natural Bridge Zoo. (In a separate document filed later, he described these visits as semiannual.)

“I have not this year scheduled a Va. Veterinary visit,” Wilson wrote in his Dec. 1 email. “Asha has developed some concerns with her teeth and has some possible GI issues.” He said that “due to veterinary concerns,” the elephant had been loaded that morning for a trip to the privately-owned Two Tails Ranch in Williston, Florida, “for my veterinary evaluation.”

Wilson went on to describe some of the details of the transport, including the notation that her longtime handler, Mark Easley, would accompany Asha, and then wrote, “I am sorry for this last-minute notice. Veterinary concerns take precedent.” 

What this email didn’t explicitly say was that Asha was being imported into Florida without the required paperwork from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Wilson did not explain why he waited until 9:38 p.m. to notify Florida officials when the elephant had been loaded “prior to noon.”

Asha arrived in Florida at the Two Tails Ranch about 6 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 2. The documents say she was offered hay and fresh water.

In a later document filed with the commission, Wilson said he first saw the elephant at 4 p.m Dec. 2.

”She was freely walking in her designated yard. No lameness issues were observed,” the document said. “She was possibly a touch dehydrated but freely drank fresh water when it was offered. A free choice water filled stock tank was present … Her stools were normal. Fecal analysis was negative for parasites. She was in good body weight (maybe a little chubby). Her attitude was good. She exhibited no signs of illness nor issues from transport.”

There was no mention in that report of the dental and gastrointestinal issues Wilson had referenced just a day earlier when writing about the “veterinary emergency” that required immediate transport.

Later that day, Wilson emailed the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to complain that no one had responded to his message of the night before. He called the situation “a time-critical veterinary case” due to “GI issues that may be related to previous dental issues. Bad teeth in elephants can be a challenging ailment. Asha’s possible GI issues made this a more critical case.” He said, “I will be obtaining blood samples for analysis, unless her condition worsens, in a few days.”

On Monday, Dec. 4, when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission staff returned to their office and saw the weekend emails, Wilson’s messages were passed up the chain of command with the notation “flagged.” The fact that an elephant had been imported into Florida without the required paperwork prompted an official investigation.

What the Florida investigation found

On Dec. 11, 2023, commission investigator Kenneth Holmes appears to have begun his review. He wanted to hear from the Natural Bridge Zoo about why Asha had been sent to Florida. When he ran a Google search to get the zoo’s phone number, what he saw instead were multiple news stories about the attorney general’s raid five days earlier. 

Holmes immediately called Virginia State Police and left a message. At that point, he wrote, he put his investigation on hold until he heard from Virginia authorities. His report said state police never called him back, so 10 days later he resumed his inquiries. 

On Dec. 21, Holmes interviewed Patricia Zerbini, who runs the Two Tails Ranch. She told him “that Asha did not have a medical emergency but knew at one time she had a bad tooth.”

Zerbini also told the fish and wildlife investigator that planning to move Asha had begun sometime before Thanksgiving, more than a week before the actual transport.

In a separate interview, Wilson, the veterinarian, told the investigator that the owners of the Natural Bridge Zoo, Karl and Debbie Mogensen, had been talking about retiring Asha to Florida anyway because of her age (then 40, middle-aged for an elephant). The investigator said Wilson told him, “So, let’s bring her down here to evaluate the situation with whatever is going on with her teeth and any possible diarrhea and if it works out, she stays here.”

Zerbini told the investigator that she had talked to Wilson “before Thanksgiving” about moving Asha to her facility and had given him three possible dates that would suit. She also told the investigator that she had told Wilson he’d need a permit from Florida officials to bring Asha into the state.

That required paperwork on two ends — in Virginia and Florida.

The required certificate of veterinary inspection from Virginia was dated Nov. 25, 2023, and signed by Ashley Spencer, a Rockbridge County veterinarian who served the Natural Bridge Zoo. Spencer has since been indicted on four felony counts of forging documents, but prosecutors have not described what, exactly, she is alleged to have forged. All parties to the case are now under a court-imposed gag order not to talk about the case. 

The Nov. 25 date is six days before Wilson notified the state of Florida on Dec. 1 about a “veterinary emergency” that necessitated the move.

If there was any urgency to get Asha out of Virginia due to the prospect of a raid on the Natural Bridge Zoo, Zerbini and Wilson said they weren’t aware of it. Both told the investigator that they didn’t know the Natural Bridge Zoo was going to be raided and didn’t hear about it until a week after the event.

Not until Dec. 11 did Wilson conduct other medical tests on the elephant, 10 days after he had cited a “veterinary emergency” as a reason to import the elephant without the right paperwork. Wilson wrote to the commission: “I opted to wait [to] collect blood/urine samples until 12/11/24 to avoid any travel / stress false readings.” 

When the test results came back, Wilson wrote that neither of them “showed any issues or abnormalities of note.” 

Florida investigator skeptical of an emergency

On Dec. 21, the same day that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission investigator interviewed Zerbini at Two Tails Ranch, he interviewed Wilson. The investigator’s account of that interview: “When I asked M. Wilson if it made more sense for him to go to NBZ [Natural Bridge Zoo] to examine the elephant rather than bring the elephant to Florida, he stated he was an active veterinarian with an active consulting practice at a teaching zoo and he had absolutely nobody that can cover for him right now, so it did not (make more sense).”

The investigator quizzed Wilson why he didn’t get a permit. “He stated he could not wait 90 days for a permit and there was no way for him to contact FWC [Fish and Wildlife Commission] to do what he needed to do quickly.” Wilson said he did speak to a bovine veterinarian with the Florida Department of Agriculture who had directed him to the commission on Dec. 1.

“I advised him he never attempted to call me or the investigator who normally dealt with Wilson’s facility,” investigator Holmes wrote. “He said he did not have my phone number stored. He stated he changed phones about a year ago and none of his numbers transferred to new phone. He stated he did not even think about calling Inv. Miller because the elephant was not being housed in his area.”

Wilson also told the investigator that Asha “is in great health.”

On Dec. 28, he talked with Zerbini at Two Tails Ranch a second time. She asked him not to turn on his body camera, the report says. Asha’s handler from Natural Bridge Zoo, Mark Easley, was present. “P. Zerbini advised M. Easley rarely leaves Asha and sleeps in the barn with her.” (Easley has since been indicted in Rockbridge County on three charges related to animal cruelty.)

Holmes found Asha in good condition but “slightly overweight.” He wrote in his report that he reminded Zerbini that the elephant had been imported without a permit. “She reiterated that M. Wilson told her he got the permit,” he wrote.

Holmes was skeptical that there really had been an emergency involving Asha. “It appeared to me that if there was a critical veterinary issue and there was a concern of uprooting Asha from the facility she had been housed at for 30 years, it made more sense for M. Wilson to travel to NBZ rather than the elephant be transported to Florida,” the investigator wrote. “In addition, M. Wilson did not indicate there was a critical issue with Asha upon his visual [observation] on 12/03/2023.”

The investigator wrote that Wilson “had ample time” to obtain a permit and concluded that “Asha was imported into the state of Florida by Mark Wilson, DVM in violation of the following laws and penalties.” The investigator then listed two sections of Florida code, one dealing with importing a non-native species without a permit, a second dealing with importing a non-native animal without authority from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission.

Under the code section that the investigator cited in the report, Wilson could have been charged and, if convicted, sentenced to up to one year in jail. However, the investigator noted that since Wilson had notified the agency on the night of Dec. 1 that the transport was underway, that those involved with the move were “Florida authorized elephant handlers” and that Asha was now at a licensed facility, he opted instead to issue a written warning for “unlawful importation.”

Wilson, contacted by phone by Cardinal News, angrily said he didn’t want to talk about the case: “I’m not going to talk to you. I don’t have anything to say. The whole thing’s over with. Don’t bother me again.”

The group Free All Captive Elephants is critical of the decision not to charge Wilson, whom it has complained about in the past for what it calls “his bias towards those in the circus industry.” It issued this statement: “FACE finds it egregious that not only was Wilson given a warning, a mere slap on the wrist, but he is still practicing veterinarian medicine in the state of Florida.“

Zerbini did not respond to multiple emails, texts or phone calls from Cardinal over the past month. One message left with Two Tails did prompt a call from a number that showed up on caller ID as being from “L Zerbini” — Zerbini’s full name is Leonilda Patricia Zerbini. The woman calling said that if Cardinal sent its questions in writing, Zerbini would respond the next day. Cardinal sent questions, but there was no response.

A spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission said the report speaks for itself: Asha’s transport to Florida triggered a state investigation there and resulted in a veterinarian being issued a warning that he had violated the law.