Wednesday, May 15, 2013

What I saw at Taronga Park Zoo


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Zoos busily justify themselves on the grounds that they provide "captive breeding programmes" and "constitute a 'lifeline' for endangered species", implying that they offer a sort of protective custody for them from the unsafety of the wild. But with diminishing habitats, there’s little likelihood of a return of any zoo animal, to the wild, either for present or future generations. In reality zoos are in the entertainment business, and a lucrative one it is too. But I wasn’t entertained; I was too ashamed to look too long directly into the faces of these animals.
That day at the zoo, I saw things which haunt me still, particularly the once-mighty lion reduced to a mere shadow of his former glory, living in a sort of purgatory between life and death. There was a clouded leopard with merely six square metres of flooring and no exposure to any sunlight. Great apes were reduced to walking about like zombies. The fur of the Kodiac bears was rubbed to the skin, from lying on concrete all day. I saw Back Swans swimming in a shallow concrete tank with their wings clipped to prevent escape. The mysterious Dancing Brolga was cooped up in a 4 metre high cage, and was certainly not dancing. A 2½ metre-wingspan Andean Condor was imprisoned in a similar sort of cage.
And then I visited the ‘Nightlife Show’. Inside a concrete bunker there was a row of glassed-in cages, containing some of Australia’s nocturnal animals and birds. They are being kept here in perpetual dim blue light (to simulate night in the bush). To give the place a ‘realistic atmosphere’, these creatures endure a continuous ghostly drone of a dingo howling (from a hidden tape recorder). The design of this display must surely have arisen from a particularly sadistic imagination.
Do we want children to grow up immune to cruelty like this? If so give them a day out at Taronga Zoo.

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