Joviality and laughter filled the evening soiree at the Voice for Animals Foundation’s Beverly Hills fundraiser hosted by Lily Tomlin. Top veteran comedians lent their talents to raise money for a pending court case to free Billy the elephant from the L.A. Zoo.

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A lawsuit charging the Los Angeles Zoo with abusing elephants will be allowed to go to trial, a three-judge panel of California's 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled on Wednesday.

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German media picks up Billy's story:

Seit 20 Jahren lebt Elefantenbulle Billy bereits als letzter Vertreter seiner Spezies im Zoo von Los Angeles. Nun ist unter Stars wie Cher, Lily Tomlin und Gitarrist Slash ein bizarrer Streit um die Zukunft des Dickhäuters entbrannt.

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Longtime "Price is Right" host Bob Barker pledged $1.5 million today to move the lone elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo to a sanctuary in Northern California, a move that could end a dispute about where the pachyderm should live.

Barker said in a letter he would donate the money to move Billy the elephant to the facility run by the Performing Animal Welfare Society.

There, Billy would be reunited with Ruby, another elephant previously moved from the zoo.

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With celebrity fanfare, two elephant-size billboards will rise this morning, warning of danger to the L.A. Zoo's lone pachyderm.

Paid for by animal-welfare activists, the billboards in Hollywood and North Hollywood will hang in the district of Councilman Tom LaBonge, chief booster for a stalled $42 million elephant exhibit.

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January 7, 2009

Marking the anniversary of Billy the elephant's acquisition at the Los Angeles Zoo, Councilman Tony Cardenas on Wednesday revived the debate about whether the city should exhibit elephants.

Joined by actress Mariana Tosca, who serves as an animal welfare adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Catherine Doyle of In Defense of Animals, Cardenas renewed his call for the city to abandon its plans for a $42 million pachyderm forest.

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December 11, 2008

In a survey of 4,500 captive elephants worldwide, a team of researchers from the U.K., Canada and Kenya found that once you lock up the giant, space-loving beasts, their health suffers, their median life span plummets, and they quit breeding — the last things you would want for a creature you're ostensibly trying to help survive. "Whether or not it's valid to say zoos keep species alive depends on which species you're talking about," says animal-welfare scientist Georgia Mason of the University of Guelph in Ontario. "Many species do well. Elephants don't."

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December 4, 2008

A budget deficit could achieve what years of lobbying by celebrities and animal-rights activists couldn't: sending the city zoo's last elephant, Billy, to a sanctuary.

The City Council voted Wednesday to halt further funding for the planned $42 million Pachyderm Forest exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo while it debates what should happen to the partially completed exhibit, which already has cost $12 million. The vote came two days after the council's budget committee recommended canceling the project as a cost-saving measure.

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December 4, 2008

Actress LILY TOMLIN is leading a new crusade to halt a $42 million (GBP28 million) elephant enclosure at Los Angeles Zoo.  The 9 To 5 star has joined with California animal rights activists in an effort to force zoo bosses to save the bulk of the cash and use some of it to relocate their longtime bull elephant, Billy, to a wildlife sanctuary.

Tomlin, who previously fought successfully to relocate another L.A. Zoo elephant, called Ruby, says, "The habitat (at the zoo) is simply not big enough, and no habitat in a zoo is big enough for an elephant... They are mammoth and majestic and beautiful and sensitive, and, for generations, we have put elephants in zoos."

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December 4, 2008

After weeks of impassioned and lengthy debates over elephants and whether the world's largest land mammals still belong in the Los Angeles Zoo, supporters and critics alike got only a tentative verdict Wednesday: The City Council halted construction of the zoo's controversial $42-million elephant exhibit but did not outright kill it.

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December 3, 2008

The Los Angeles City Council today temporarily halted construction of the Los Angeles Zoo’s controversial $42-million elephant exhibit while officials consider alternative uses of the space, as well as alternate sources of funding for the exhibit.

Council President Eric Garcetti said council committees should report back to the full council by Jan. 24. What had been a spirited debate with city council members generating applause and cheers from the audience ground to a silent halt as both supporters and critics of the exhibit tried to figure out what had just happened.

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December 3, 2008

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote today on whether to halt construction of a controversial elephant exhibit at the LA Zoo.

The meeting comes as the tight economy threatens to suspend the $42 million "Pachyderm Forest" and celebrity opponents complain it would be too confining and depressing for the elephants.

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December 3, 2008

City Council chambers are packed this morning –- animal-welfare activists on the left, zoo supporters on the right -– in anticipation of a vote on the fate of the Los Angeles Zoo's $42-million elephant exhibit.

Two days ago, the council's budget committee recommended halting the exhibit, on which $12 million has already been spent. The budget committee chairman, Bernard Parks, worried about the yearly million-dollar cost the city would incur in paying back $14 million in city-issued bonds. But the zoo’s fundraising arm, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., has offered to cover that $14-million cost.

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December 3, 2008

How's this for timely? GLAZA, the friends-of group to the LA Zoo, announced late last night that they'll pay the $1.2 million annual debt service for the exhibit. Basically, that relieves the city's general fund of this debt and will allow construction to continue, they say. This comes right before the City Council will sit down today and possibly vote on the fate of the controversial elephant exhibit.

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December 3, 2008

A 23-year-old elephant called Billy, with friends in the highest circles of Hollywood, was at the centre of a bitter custody battle today as Los Angeles Council prepared to halt work on his new state-of-the art enclosure at the city's zoo.

Following a long campaign by animal rights activists and stars, including Goldie Hawn and Halle Berry, council-members seemed set to suspend construction of a $42 million luxury "Pachyderm Forest" which he was supposed to move into next year.

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December 3, 2008

The Los Angeles City Council voted on Wednesday to delay a controversial decision on whether to shut down the L.A. Zoo's elephant exhibit and halt construction on a new $42 million exhibit.

In a 13-2 vote, the City Council decided to send the matter back to a committee for further study and a recommendation.

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December 3, 2008

Kids can keep visiting Billy the elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo -- for now. The City Council on Wednesday delayed a controversial decision on whether to shut down the current elephant exhibit and a new $42 million exhibit being built to house pachyderms.

In a 13-2 vote, officials have sent the matter back to a committee for further study and a recommendation.

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December 3, 2008

Celebrities and animal activists are calling for the closure of the elephant exhibit, saying it doesn't provide enough space for the elephants to roam, which hurts their health. In addition, the city is facing financial problems as a result of the economy that could impact the project.

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December 3, 2008

The L.A. City Council voted 13-2 on Wednesday to temporarily stop work on the Pachyderm Forest at the Los Angeles Zoo.   The fight over the new elephant exhibit at the L.A. Zoo took center stage at the City Council meeting.

The City Council delayed a controversial decision on whether to shut down the current elephant exhibit and a new $42 million exhibit being built to house pachyderms.

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December 2, 2008

Yesterday, the LA City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee voted 3 to 2, recommending construction to halt on the LA Zoo's $42-million elephant exhibit. Originally given the go-ahead in 2006, Councilmember Tony Cardenas recently brought the issue back up saying that Billy, the lone zoo elephant, has pathological problems and that a city-owned elephant sanctuary would better suit him and any future elephants.

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December 2, 2008

Could the great elephant debate at the L.A. Zoo be coming to a close?

The Los Angeles City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee voted 3 to 2 on Monday to recommend that the city stop construction on the Los Angeles Zoo’s $42-million elephant exhibit.

“This has not been a very easy decision,” said Councilman Bernard Parks, the committee’s chairman, at the end of another lengthy and impassioned meeting, attended by vocal supporters and critics of the zoo’s plans for elephant-keeping.

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December 1, 2008

For years, controversy has swirled around the elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo. Every elephant death was scrutinized; every public hearing about the animals was filled with protesters.

It's no coincidence that the largest land mammal has prompted the largest and longest-running public relations problem for the zoo. Critics contend that the zoo has never had sufficient space to keep the lumbering behemoths.

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December 1, 2008

Every elephant death was scrutinized; every public hearing about the animals was filled with protesters. It's no coincidence that the largest land mammal has prompted the largest and longest-running public relations problem for the zoo. Critics contend that the zoo has never had sufficient space to keep the lumbering behemoths.

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December 1, 2008

Brenda Scott Royce, director of publications for the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association, sounded off this weekend at Huffington Post about all the elephant talk going on these days. Animal activists and Councilman Tony Cardenas want the exhibit currently under construction to halt work and have a search a large expansive elephant sanctuary. Royce, along with others, believe the exhibit is just fine. Their point of view has not gotten as much press, so here's some of it.

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November 8, 2008

Despite a fierce debate that has celebrities taking sides, a City Council panel decided last night to proceed with a proposed $40 million elephant enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Betty White wants to keep elephants in the zoo. Lily Tomlin passionately disagrees, declaring that "the word zoo is elephant-speak for Guantanamo."

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November 7, 2008

Lily Tomlin, Bob Barker and Robert Culp were among the celebrity animal activists who today compared a $40 million, 6-acre elephant enclosure being constructed at the Los Angeles Zoo to a military prison for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  The exhibit, set to open next year and to be called Pachyderm Forest, is designed to hold up to five adult Asian elephants and three of their offspring, according to zoo officials, who say it will be spacious, with three and a half acres for the elephants to roam around, plus two pools and a waterfall.

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November 6, 2008

In her beautiful and heartbreaking novel The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy tells the story of an elephant herd in Africa as it faces vanishing habitat, drought, and poachers. The story is rendered by way of characters such as Mud, She-Swaggers, and Tall-Time. They are on a quest to find the white bone, a sacred object which will lead their herd to safety. Like all nations, this one has its own way of describing things: a "flow stick" is a snake, a "sting" is a bullet, and humans are "hind-leggers."

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November 6, 2008

Celebrities who want to remove elephants from the Los Angeles Zoo say living there can harm their health and shorten their lives.  Lily Tomlin said Thursday that she thinks "the word zoo is elephant-speak for Guantanamo."

Tomlin joined Bob Barker, Robert Culp and Kathryn Joosten of "Desperate Housewives" at a news conference.

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