Jim Mahoney / DMN (Jenny) and file [hoto

Actress Lily Tomlin (inset) is lending her voice to backers of a new home for Jenny the elephant.

DALLAS — Award winning actress Lily Tomlin has recorded two television commercials urging the Dallas Zoo and Dallas City Hall to retire Jenny the elephant to a private sanctuary in Tennessee.

More than a week after the city canceled plans to send Jenny to Mexico and speed up construction on a larger living space for her in Dallas, the calls for the city’s lone surviving elephant to be retired to the facility that caters to old and ill pachyderms.

Tomlin does not appear in the television ads released late this week, but she narrates the 30 and 60 second spots over pictures of Jenny confined in her small pen at the Dallas Zoo. Those images are contrasted with video of elephants running down paths, frolicking in water, and appearing at ease at the vast Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn.

Images in the television commercial also show Jenny swaying back in forth on her front legs at the Dallas Zoo, which elephant experts say indicates stress and frustration.

In addition to the Tomlin ads, News 8 has learned that fundraising is under way for a marketing campaign using the "Save Jenny" slogan.

Concerned Citizens for Jenny, a local group that adopted Jenny’s cause, demands she be retired to the sanctuary. CCFJ has made good on its promise to continue pressuring members of the Dallas City Council.

At least a dozen people — including the group’s founder, Margaret Morin — attended Wednesday’s council session and spoke before city leaders. Morin said she and volunteers will continue to urge local politicians to send Jenny to Tennessee from the public zoo.

Over the last two months, Concerned Citizens for Jenny led a massive e-mail and telephone campaign to successfully prevent the Dallas Zoo from sending Jenny to the Africam Safari Park in Puebla, Mexico, as it had originally intended.

Thousands of people from around the world sent letters to Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and city council members protesting the decision to have the elephant sent to the Mexican drive-thru zoo, which is accredited by the Association for Zoos and Aquariums.

On August 20, the zoo abruptly canceled that plan and announced it would expedite construction of a new and larger elephant exhibit at the Dallas Zoo.

Dallas Zoo Executive Director Gregg Hudson said the new exhibit, to be completed by the spring of 2010, will be four acres — giving Jenny and up to three more elephants space to move around.

Right now, Jenny, the city’s only surviving elephant and a resident at the Dallas Zoo for 22 years, lives in a cramped, outdated exhibit with only about one-third of an acre for her to roam.

The Dallas Zoo also said it has identified a female companion for Jenny, though it has not yet said where that elephant currently lives. Medical tests are under way, a zoo spokesman said, and the second African elephant could join Jenny in Dallas within weeks.

But Concerned Citizens for Jenny fears she might not live long enough to see her new living area. They point to research from different animal welfare groups over the years showing many elephants in captivity at zoos die in their 30s rather than their counterparts in the wild who can live until their 70s.

Jenny is 31.

Plus, her medical history indicates a history of aggression, the need to be drugged, and past evidence of her trying to hurt herself.

The Tennessee sanctuary provides space and solitude, with more than 300 acres for African elephants.

But, unlike the Dallas Zoo, The Elephant Sanctuary does not have any full-time veterinarians on site. Instead, it contracts out with two nearby vets to provide medical care anytime it’s needed.

Hudson said the zoo remains committed to keeping its elephant exhibit.

At least eight zoos have ended their elephant exhibits altogether in the last decade or so, including facilities in Detroit, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

E-mail jwhitely@wfaa.com