Yesterday, the Woodland Park Zoo and a visiting expert in elephant reproduction performed another artificial insemination procedure on Chai, the zoo’s 32-year-old Asian elephant. The last procedure was performed on Chai in March of this year.

Semen for the procedure was contributed by a 13-year-old bull at Albuquerque Biological Park Zoo. With no offspring to date, he is genetically valuable to the North American population of elephants, according to the zoo.

It will be approximately 15 to 16 weeks before the zoo can confirm a pregnancy by ultrasound and through hormonal changes in Chai. If she is pregnant, her due date will be in 2013.

Chai has been inseminated with this proven technique during nine ovulation cycles since 2005 but only one has resulted in a pregnancy. The pregnancy, in 2008, unfortunately ended in an early miscarriage, which is not uncommon in mammals, especially during the first trimester.

Chai was also the mother of Hansa, a female elephant who was born at the zoo in 2000 and died unexpectedly at 6½ years old from a newly discovered elephant herpesvirus. Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of Hansa's death.

According to the zoo, the procedure is a part of the zoo’s ongoing commitment to sustaining a genetically healthy population of elephants in zoos through the Species Survival Plan (SSP) for elephants. As elephants in the wild continue to face extreme pressure from conflicts with humans, elephants in zoos are effective conservation ambassadors for their cousins in the wild.

“A baby would help us begin to re-build a multigenerational social group here at the zoo,” said Dr. Nancy Hawkes, the zoo’s general curator and resident expert in elephant reproduction.

Some critics of the zoo’s elephant program claim that the procedure is invasive but Bruce Upchurch, the zoo’s curator of elephants in response, said Chai is "very comfortable with the procedure".

"She can choose to participate or not, and we take our cues from her. Chai’s health and well being come first,” Upchurch said.

Other critics claim that by performing the procedure, the Woodland Park Zoo is callously disregarding health risks such as herpes, which caused Hansa's death.

"Woodland Park Zoo is a herpes exposed facility and therefore the zoo should no longer engage in an Asian elephant breeding program. The simple truth is the risk of death for the offspring is too great,” said expert elephant veterinarian, Dr. Jennifer Conrad in a press release from Friends of the Woodland Park Elephants,

There is no cure for EEHV and Chai could potentially pass the herpesvirus to her own fetus.

“Elephant herpesvirus attacks the internal organs causing massive hemorrhaging and a painful, gruesome death. To even take a chance of causing another defenseless calf such a horrific death is unconscionable and unethical” says Nancy Pennington, co-founder of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants.