Bangkok's zoo paw is in 2024 A concrete and smoke aging with animals locked in cages inside. The Maputo Zoo was a pet luxury cemetery in colonial times, a hunting farm of hungry people during the civil war, And a prison of surviving beasts living the garbage when I visited it in 2013. The Yaguar Xoo, In Oaxaca, Mexico, It was in 2015 a retirement and a clinic of cats that "worked" before in circuses, They were found injured or were born in captivity. Should animals live in zoos?
In the middle of the capital of Thailand, a megalopolis of more than ten million inhabitants, It occurred to someone to place a zoo on the roof of a building surrounded by antennas, cables, cement and pollution of cars. In Bangkok the rooftop are famous to go to dinner or have a drink, and in 1983 The owners of a new shopping center thought that locking Tigres in the attic, apes, Bears and snakes was a genius that would attract customers.
Someone came up with that it was a good idea to place a zoo on the roof of a building surrounded by antennas
Among those animals Bua Noi arrived, A gorilla that the last memory of the outside world is to leave the door of an elevator. After that, He has been locked in a cement cell for more than thirty years with the single company of some two -legged animals that on the other side of the crystal take pictures.
Paii asks, whose name means small lotus, It has become a symbol of the struggle of environmental groups that for years have demanded that the hominid be released for the last years of their life to live without the bars of a concrete prison.
The visit to the enclosure, If it enters La Avenida Somdet Phra Pinkla Road, It is even more gloomy than they had told us. On the ground floor there are some positions that sell baratijas and the rest of the property seems abandoned. We take the elevator to the seventh silver, Where a woman sells entry tickets (300 Bath per person, about 8 EUR), And you access a roof, From which the terraces of the rest of the adjacent properties are seen. Heat is intense, There are birds with birds, reptiles, apes ... has an ancient air, Bad all preserved, Grey, Without green, Because all the green of that place are some pots and plastic branches.
The "piece" is Bua Noi. The gorilla is in a hallway, In the largest cage in the enclosure. It is alone, lying in an internal cabin. His life must have been lush ravines and light streams, and yet All she has known is some pink tire and green that hang from the roof and some dead trunks tied with ropes.
The scene of a Borneo orangutan is not different that is also just just in the front cage. Your cabin is smaller. Rest thrown on the ground. It seems gone, absent, Until a family with some children approaches the fence and the ape takes out their hand that will give them food. Ask how they do the sapiens in the streets, lengthening the arm and waiting for some charity. He puts the fast food in his mouth. Then, He stays with his lost look at the bars for a while until decides to do the five meters that separate those irons from your cement bed.
Ask how they do the sapiens in the streets, lengthening the arm and waiting for some charity
Across, Bua Noi was sitting. Several families take the opportunity to contemplate the gorilla. She looks at the wall, without flinching, Under that roof that is and has been all his life. He doesn't know what the jungle sounds, But sharply listening to the sound of cars. Nor do you see them. His world is a lot of sounds that do not know what they are, Where do they come from.
Ecologist groups have been demanding the liberation of the apes for years. No one knows how I get there. I read various researchers hypotheses. It seems that it was trafficked before Thai laws prohibited species traffic. The new owners of the zoo claim that moving it would be for her and a conviction. “The aged gorilla has spent its life in the zoo and is accustomed to the environment and the absence of natural pathogens for more than 30 years ", The owners say.
The Thai government also tried to free her. Some talk about taking her to a sanctuary in Thailand, in a green space, that allows him before he dies knowing that he rains on him and then drying out the sun. But possibly none of that will happen and the old Gorilla will die believing that the entire possible planet was a Bangkok attic.
THE HOUSE OF THE FLOWS VAGABUNDAS DE MAPUTO
And 2013, I went to report to the Maputo Zoo, Mozambique. They had told me that it was a bleak place where the few animals that survived hunger and war lived in bad conditions. Here reality was also worse.
"There are some groups of monkeys and babouins, Two eagles locked in a rusty cage, Four crocodiles in two different habitats that share space with shoes floating in their waters and plastic bottles and two cobras and a boa that twist on a bent stick in another rusty cage. There is nothing more. There is nothing left of that splendor zoo of the colonial era. ‘The animals are dying little by little until any’, The workers told me.
The enclosure was created in 1929, When Mozambique was then Portuguese colony. So it was one of the largest parks on the continent, With elephants, Rhinos, lions and buffalo inside. When visiting the facilities 84 years later there was a scene that caught my attention. Inside the zoo there was a pet cemetery. The wealthy lusas families buried their dogs and cats in tombs under marble tombstones. The tombs cost more money than the homes of the 95% of an illiterate population and lived in miserable huts.
There was no fence and many people entered and hunted the zebras, chickens or antelopes to eat them
But all that was a distant past, Because the War of Independence and the subsequent civil war ravaged the country and Mozambique was for years the poorest country in the world. That caused the neighbors to change the sense of the zoo and make it a supermarket. "The worst was after the war, behind him 94, Then many people moved to live here in the surroundings. There was no fence and many people entered and hunted the zebras, chickens or antelopes to eat them », Paulinho explained to me, A zoo guard I interviewed. There were hunger and those animals relieved her.
I remember once I had a small intervention in medical offices, A humble clinic of Maputo, And while the veteran nurse was on the stretcher, the doctor narrated those years in which human flesh were sold in the markets. “In the years of hunger, 1982 a 1984, during the Civil War, human meat was sold in the markets. An albino disappeared, They chopped it up and sold it as meat to the people.. So there was no meat and there was a lot of hunger. Then the people who bought it with excitement saw the state of the meat and knew that they had been deceived.", She said. He told it and began to laugh naturally as he gave me two points on the back.
In that context, The zoo, Full of beggars and homeless people, It ended up being an abandoned enclosure. They taught me images of the familic lions who were starving there locked up. The last to die was a lone male like Bua Noi. Pet tombs were looted. They took the marble and even the metal plates with their names.
Just when I visited the enclosure, The last hippo had just died that survived years alone in an unclean pool. "I was sick and alone. It was sad to see it ", Paulinho told me.
There was a huge crocodile, old and with inflated body, that after a metal fence he hoped to enter a dirty water, surrounded by plastic bottles
I walked the enclosure. There was a huge crocodile, old and with inflated body, that after a metal fence he was waiting to enter a dirty water between plastic bottles. The enclosure was a dump. I saw four humble appearance children before the cavea of ??the monkeys. In a small birds for birds there was a dead rat. The rest were empty less one in which there were two eagles.
And it turns out that all that space was trying to restore the Association of Friends of the Park, that had 500 pity. I met right there with Dáude Carimo, its president, that told me about the recovery project. «In five or ten years we want to renew everything and make a bird theme park. Great mammals we cannot have, But if small animals that teach people the animal wealth of Mozambique ”. The plan needed an investment, He assured me, four million dollars.
That seemed crazy to me. The Maputo Jardim Zoological was nestled in a fairly poor area of ??the capital. Around the enclosure, that the association had achieved again walloons, There were hundreds of infravy. With four million dollars many of these people could access a house with some dignity. “I think it is important to respect animals and teach to live with them. There is no reason to compare, is absurd », Dáude told me when I expressed my doubts about an investment thus appropriate an animals enclosure. «It is important that this zoo exists. Mozambique's children and people should know the animals we have. People can pay the entrance here (0,12 EUR), But you can't go to the big parks », Paulinho told me, one of those who probably lived without running water or latrine.
The following months, already published the article, I talked to various Mozambiqueños. As a rule, The answer is that They supported being able to enjoy an enclosure that allowed them to enjoy a fauna that foreign tourists enjoyed as a rule.
The best Mozambique park, The beautiful Gorongosa NP, I was in the middle of the country, I needed to get there and travel a 4×4, and the cost of accommodation or camping, for which a team is needed, It was impossible for all those people.
Yagua: THE LOS JAGUARS REFUGE
But zoos can also be a shelter. And 2015, I visited the Yaguar Xoo in Oaxaca. There they exhibited jaguars who previously lived in circuses, or they were injured there, Sick ..., But they did it precisely with the aim of stopping displaying them. “We intend to train them, re -educate them and keep their wild instincts to return to the jungle, which is where they must be. Hopefully one day this park does not have a single jaguar, That is the goal ", Victor explained to me, The director with his partner Andrea. They then saw a beautiful jaguar who trained so that they did not lose their predator instinct by putting meat or a box they threw with a rope.
Should zoos be closed? In my opinion, Bangkok's zoo leg and Jardim de Maputo, yes, And the Yaguar Xoo de Oaxaca no. The scientific work of preservation of some enclosures is important. A report from 2011 made by the Max Planck Institute in Germany and published by the prestigious journal Science assured that a 25% of mammals and a 9% of the in danger of extinction survived in zoos.
A 25% of mammals and a 9% of the in danger of extinction survived in zoos
There are those who believe that this is not important because in any case it cancels the freedom of the beasts to which it must be protected in their environment, But I don't know if a gazella lives better locked in the care and large zoo of San Diego than terrified that they eat it in the Lower Zambeze. In the many years that I have been visiting parks around the world I have learned one thing: Nature is brutally cruel by mere survival instinct.
Bua Noi deserved to live outside a cage of a burning attic from Bangkok; The Jaguar of Oaxac; The crocodile must swim free in a non -filthy water, And to the four little ones who looked at the monkeys of the monkeys at the Maputo Zoo, you have to give them the opportunity to enjoy their nature. What do we do with zoos?
