Calls for closing zoos

Calls across the world are growing for shutting down zoos for being more of ‘concentration camps’ for animals rather than ‘safe sanctuaries’. The growing realisation that animals are generally mistreated in the enclosures of zoological gardens is not baseless. This can be verified by a visit to the zoo — especially in Pakistan and several other countries of the region — any time. Visitors to the zoo generally harass animals in a variety of ways, and even sometimes hurt them physically. Animal rights activists call such people animal haters. This, to a certain degree, is true as borne out by the public behaviour with the zoo inmates.

The issue is again highlighted in Pakistan in the wake of a ruling this month by the Islamabad High Court regarding two bears at Marghazar Zoo in the federal capital. The honourable chief justice of the high court compared zoos to concentration camps, calling it inhumane to have deprived the two bears of their natural habitat for the mere ‘entertainment of the human species’. The bears, Suzie and Bubloo, have now been rescued and flown to Jordan from Islamabad. Prior to the Himalayan bear saga, we had the story of Kaavan. Dubbed the ‘world’s loneliest elephant’, in November, Kaavan left Pakistan for Cambodia to start a new life with fellow pachyderms at a local sanctuary.

And last week finally, the Islamabad zoo also shut down, prompting many animal rights activists to demand that all zoos across the country be closed as well. Yes, caging animals for public entertainment is cruel — to say the least. Even for the sake of children’s education, it frankly makes no sense. To be fair, in most instances, animals across Pakistan who live in a variety of zoos usually suffer because of very poor living conditions and the demand for closure of such enclosures may not be without merit.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2020.

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