The elephant may be one of the national emblems of India, but animal-rights activists have long lamented the squalid conditions that most of the country’s captive jumbos endure.

Now the activists — and the animals — have cause to celebrate, after officials ruled that all of the elephants living in the country’s dingy zoos and dismal circuses must be moved to newly established “elephant camps” deep in the countryside.

The move, which came after a long-running campaign by animal-rights activists, will affect about 140 elephants in 26 zoos and 16 circuses across India, according to B. K. Gupta, an officer for the Central Zoo Authority (CZA).

It would be hard to begrudge them the prospect of a new life. In 2005, Peta, the campaign group, investigated 14 of India’s largest zoos. It reported “appalling neglect at every single facility”, including instances where hungry animals were forced to forage through rubbish for rotten food. It also discovered scores of animals that were given no shelter from India’s torrential monsoon rains and blazing sun.

Some of the worst abuses and most squalid conditions involved elephants. At the Aurangabad Municipal Zoo, Peta found that all of the elephants — animals that in the wild spend up to 18 hours a day roaming, feeding, bathing and socialising — were kept in a bleak concrete enclosure. One had both front legs tethered with a spiked chain, which “prevented him from moving more than a few shuffling steps in any direction”. After Rajkumar, an elephant at the Mumbai zoo, attacked his keeper, Peta filed a lawsuit complaining about his intensive confinement. The court ruled in the campaign group’s favour, and Rajkumar was moved to another zoo in 2007.

Such animals will now be re-homed in special “elephant camps”, which officials say will be established on protected land close to existing wildlife reserves. Under the plans, the transplanted animals may be put to work on eco-tourism projects and for patrolling tiger reserves.

There are doubts, however, over whether sufficient resources will be made available to provide for the newly moved elephants’ upkeep and protection — especially as other landmark projects, such as a drive to protect India’s shrinking tiger population, are failing dismally.

“Special facilities have to be created , which will add to the pressures faced by natural habitats,” said Raman Sukumar, a professor of ecology at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

There is also disappointment that the move will not affect the 3,500 elephants who live in captivity in temples, or who work lifting timber.

India has between 24,000 and 33,000 elephants in the wild — by far the largest population left in Asia, where wild animals have fallen prey to ivory poachers while their working cousins have steadily been replaced by trucks and tractors, leaving their handlers, or mahouts, dependent on begging.

Temple elephants, which are used in religious processions, often become scared by the large crowds that gather and run amok, trampling people. In the southern state of Kerala, 40 mahouts and 45 onlookers died in 2006.

There are signs that such incidents are stoking the realisation that India’s attitudes towards elephants will have to change as the country becomes increasingly urban. In 2007, the animals were banned from the city limits of Mumbai, India’s commercial capital after a series of accidents.

In 2006, an elephant named Laxmi was hit by a water tanker in the city. Because proper medical attention could not be provided, she suffered with her injuries for more than a day before dying. When another elephant in Mumbai was frightened by a fire cracker and fell onto a car, the mahout fled the scene. The elephant subsequently went on the rampage, requiring an entire platoon of paramilitary police troops to subdue her.

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