Garden City ? An animal rights group is continuing its campaign to persuade the Lee Richardson Zoo to send its two elephants to a more spacious sanctuary, despite the zoo’s plans to expand the elephants’ living quarters.

But officials at the city-owned zoo say that Moki and Chana are staying put.

“We think our elephants are pretty content,” said Carol Hauschild, development director of Friends of Lee Richardson Zoo. “We just want to make it better for them.”

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals say the animals should be sent to a sanctuary in California or Tennessee, where they would have more room to roam and could herd with other elephants.

“This is a perfect time for (zoo officials) to retire the elephants and recognize they can’t meet their needs,” said Nicole Meyer, an elephant specialist for PETA, which has long advocated the removal of elephants from zoos.

The group launched a letter-writing campaign this month to persuade Garden City officials to give up the elephants.

Zoo officials have been considering expanding the stalls since last year to meet standards set by the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn., said Dan Baffa, zoo director.

On Thursday, the Friends of the Zoo’s board of directors made the elephant stall expansion the top priority on the zoo’s master plan. Blueprints must be completed and funds for the $200,000 project raised, but the group hopes to finish the work by May 2006, the deadline for compliance with the new standards.

Still, a PETA “action alert” begun on May 3 on the group’s Web site continues to encourage people to write to zoo and city officials to support closing the elephant exhibit. About 20 opponents of the elephant stall plans have written city and zoo officials thus far, said City Manager Bob Halloran.

Moki and Chana, 22-year-old female African elephants, were part of a herd in Africa that was to be killed because of elephant overpopulation, Baffa said. The adults were killed and the babies brought to Florida, where the zoo bought them, he said.

The elephants have been at the zoo since 1986, living in a barn that contains one 450-square-foot stall and a 325-square-foot stall, which used to meet AZA standards. The association revised its stall requirements in 2001, saying all stalls must be 400 square feet.

Member zoos were required to submit plans to comply with the standards by May 1, which the Lee Richardson Zoo did.

Baffa said the general plan calls for gutting the barn where Moki and Chana are housed and creating three 600-square-foot stalls. The larger size would meet the new standard for elephants living with calves because the zoo tried, unsuccessfully, to artificially inseminate Chana last year.

The new AZA standards also call for 1,800 square feet of outdoor space for a zoo’s first elephant and 900 square feet for each additional elephant. Moki and Chana currently have access to a 5,000-square-foot outdoor pen.