"I can't believe it. We offered to save his life. Zoos need to change the way they do business." (Robert Krijuff, Director of a wildlife park in the Netherlands)
Yesterday I wrote about the plight of Marius, a young giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo who was to be killed because he didn't fit into the zoo's breeding program.
Today I learned that Marius was killed despite another zoo offering to take him and thousands signing petitions to save him. This was an unnecessary murder. Shame on the zoo for their lack of compassion. Shame on them for considering Marius to be a "surplus" unfeeling object. I'm not alone in being offended by this reprehensible slaughter. Thousands have signed online petitions to no avail.
To quote from the BBC article: "The director of a wildlife park in the Netherlands, Robert Krijuff, whose last-minute offer of a place was also rejected, said: 'I can't believe it. We offered to save his life. Zoos need to change the way they do business.'" Amen. It is not only uninformed or uneducated "animal activists" who work to save the lives of animals held in cages who are used and abused for making more of them who themselves will then languish until they too are forced to breed or be killed because they're considered to be useless and valueless.
You can contact the zoo at mst@zoo.dk. Twenty to thirty animals are killed there every year.
Note: As I was writing this piece I Iearned that six lions were just put down at the Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire, UK. You can contact them at enquiries@longleat.co.uk.