Visitors sickened by Kurdish zoo animals’ plight
Visitors to a zoo in the Iraqi-Kurd city of Erbil have complained of sickening conditions and called for the animals, including a smuggled baby lion, to be relocated.
The zoo, in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, is home to more than 200 animals but most are kept in small and isolated enclosures. Many of the animals are smuggled in by the zoo’s owner, who runs the park as a hobby, a zookeeper related to the owner, Khaleel Kawani, told the Kurdish Globe website.
A recent addition to the park is a five-month-old lion cub brought from Africa via Thailand and Syria. The lion, which is unused to the cold mountain conditions, is currently being kept in a small tiger cage near the entrance to the zoo and looks scared and ill, according to visitors.
“I wish someone could free this innocent lion or place him in a larger, more natural environment within a modern zoo,” said 12-year-old animal-lover Zana Osman, who said the cub reminded her of Disney’s lion cub Simba.
“If Simba could talk, he would surely say he would want his freedom or demand a better place to live where he could move easily. He’s so lonely; he doesn’t have other lion friends or a mom and dad,” said 11-year-old Dashti Abdullah.
Two American visitors to the zoo from a nearby hotel walked straight out in shock. One of them was heard to comment: “These people are sick; look what they did to that terrified camel.”
The zoo has just one camel. The other three were sold because of a lack of space.
The future of the zoo is currently in doubt with the owner and Kurdish authorities in dispute over plans to relocate it to a more spacious site.
“The latest plot we offered was a large piece of land, around 12 km outside Erbil. But he refused because of the distance of the area to the city, fearing he wouldn’t get visitors to his new zoo,” said Nawzad Adham.
But owner Kawani said he had been promised a new location in the city and was ready to move if authorities made good on that pledge.
“The people at Erbil Municipality and the Directorate of Parks Engineering are greedy; they only give plots in large parks to rich investors building ice rinks, swimming pools, and aerial cable cars. They don’t care about poor animals and a zoo,” he said.
The zoo is also home to bears, crocodiles, monkeys and wolves and has plans to bring in elephants, tigers and zebras once it has relocated to a bigger site.
Very good report. We need to see more of this sort of thing on international news Web sites.