SAN DIEGO -- Animal rights groups are fighting to save an original resident of the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

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Saving Wankie

Wankie is a 35-year-old African elephant who first came to the park in 1972.

Now there's a battle to save her life.

Two years ago, Wankie was moved from the Wild Animal Park to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo.

Lincoln Park's elephant enclosure is less than one-twelfth the size of the Wild Animal Park's facility and, on average, 40 degrees colder in the winter, reports 10News.

Animal rights groups say the elephants are forced inside during the winter months.

Two other elephants sent from San Diego to Chicago, Tatima and Peaches, have both died in the past six months.

The Animal Protection and Resource League says that sending Wankie to another zoo will kill her and that the small enclosures in zoos are unfit for elephants.

The San Diego Zoo is sticking to its plan of finding another zoo to take Wankie, even though two animal sanctuaries with hundreds of acres have agreed to take her, reports 10News.

San Diego City councilwoman, Donna Frye, has taken up the cause, sending letters to her counterparts in Chicago.

Frye's letters urge Chicago's Alderman to pass a resolution, recommending Wankie go to a wild animal sanctuary in Tennessee or California.

But the animal rights groups fighting to save Wankie's life say time is running out.

They urge people to pressure the zoo into sending Wankie to a sanctuary in Tennessee, where she would have 2700 acres to roam around in.