05/26/07 Jailed for Life
After the death of another wild animal caged in a zoo Animal Friends protests
In spite of numerous appeals from Croatia and abroad, Split's zoo of horrors hasn't yet been closed. Instead of improving hard and unnatural way of living for zoo animals, Split zoo tries to disguise its shame with some minor beautifying changes. In Osijek zoo so far nobody was charged for negligence and death of a lion cub. In fancy Zagreb zoo animals suffer just the same what is evident in the case of a female snow leopard which died just the other day. In private zoo in Ivanovac a wolf ran away and then in shock returned back to zoo by himself.
On Saturday, May 26, 2007, Animal Friends will hold a demo in front of Zagreb Zoo in Maksimir park in order to draw attention to the very bad living conditions for animals in Croatian zoos and to protest against the very idea of confining animals in zoos.
Animal Friends is against acquiring of new animals and believes that animals from Zagreb zoo should be relocated to an area outside of city center where they would be protected from city noise and pollution and could get at least minimum appearance of freedom which was taken away from them forever.
Despite alleged care for the animals, zoos are neither animal shelters nor simulated natural habitats but they present lifelong imprisonment for wild animals without any conditions for natural behavior. This fact makes any educational role of zoos highly questionable.
For people it is fun to visit zoos and watch the animals as live exhibit displays. To people those animals are beautiful, sweet and cute. But after a few hours of fun and curiosity people go home while animals stay in their cages where they are bored to death, confined, lonely, far away from their natural habitats what makes them psychotic and self-destructive and causes the disease known as zoochosis.
The future of zoos should be modeled upon the Worldlife Center in London which plans to create a high-tech zoo without live animals in it. Visitors will be looking at animals in the wild through live satellite connection, even in very distant locations such as the Amazonian rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef or Africa.
In the 21st century zoos as we know them today should belong to the past, and people should be aware of real needs of animal species instead of using primitive instinct of caging animals for simple reason of staring at them. Therefore, Animal Friends calls citizens to boycott zoos and to stop supporting the caging of wild animals in prizoons.