African Zoo poisoning its own lions
At The Lion Zoo in Ethiopia, Abyssinian lion cubs are being poisoned in order to sell them to taxidermists. Abyssinian lions are a very rare species, and are highly respected in Ethiopian culture. They are smaller than the average lion, and they have darker manes. The upkeep of the zoo costs $6,000 a year….and even that leaves a very low provisioned home for the animals it has. Despite the zoo being a popular site, it only makes about $5,000 a year from tourism. The only way they see to have enough money to take care of the animals they have is apparently to kill some of them….to me that doesn’t make too much sense. Especially when there are only an estimated 1000 of these lions left! While it is easy for me to sit here and criticize what the zookeepers are doing, it is hard to imagine what it would be like in that situation. The Lion Zoo is attempting to create awareness for these beautiful creatures so that people will respect them and keep them in the wild…but they don’t have enough money to do that. Of course the poisoning is monitored and is supposed to be painless, but it must really hurt the zookeepers to have to kill the animals that they raise and love. It really is a tragedy that this institution that is striving to educate the public has to harm their greatest teachers.
Image: www.wikimedia.org
Article: www.enn.com
This article kind of upset me, because I LOVE animals. I can see where the zookeepers are coming from, because they obviously can’t provide for these lions. But I think that killing them off shouldn’t be an option. Maybe they could try to control the population within the zoo (separate males and females?). Maybe they could try to work with local environmentalists to work on a plan to introduce the lions that they can’t keep into the wild. I don’t know, I mean I’m no environmentalist. Hopefully they will come up with a method that will benefit both the lions and the zoo. I will definately follow up on this news story.
Posted 1 year, 8 months agoThis is a very interesting article. I agree with Sarah when she said that she knows where the zookeepers are coming from because they don’t have enough money to support the lifestyles of all of their anaimals, but killing their lions and then selling them to raise money for their awareness seems hypocritical to me. Since the Abyssinian lions are an endangered species, they should be protected. Maybe the zoo should work out a deal with other zoos to help them financially and maybe make a deal about which animals that they show. I do not know much about this issue, but I don’t think that poisioning an endangered species is the anwer to the problem.
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago