Zoos Kill Healthy Tigers For Their Skins
During the investigation, to which CAPS supplied advice, a British taxidermist told undercover reporters: “for a price I can pretty much get any specimen you want”. He added: “everything I acquire comes from zoos and safari parks”. The reporters were offered the skins of two tigers from zoos for £6,000 and a cheetah skin for £3,400. The taxidermists told how zoos kill animals before they get old, to avoid paying veterinary fees. Andre Brandwood, a taxidermist from Herefordshire claimed zoos placed a “shelf-life” on animals, to cash in on them before they grow old. Brandwood put the reporters in touch with a taxidermist in Belgium, Jean-Pierre Gerard. Gerard’s network of contacts with zoos across Europe ensures he has a “stranglehold on the market for tigers because so many zoos deal with him” and has, according to the report, fixed the price of tiger skins at £3,000, of which the zoo gets half. Some animals also came from circuses. According to Gerard, zoos contact him when they kill an animal through injury, ill health or because they have a ‘surplus’ of animals. He even showed the reporters the frozen bodies of two newborn lion cubs. Although the trade in wild tiger skins is illegal in Europe, trade in captive-bred tigers is allowed if an Article 10 certificate is given by the country’s wildlife department. While the UK’s Department of Environment (DEFRA) rarely issues such certificates, if the authority of another EU country provides a certificate to a dealer in that country the item can then be imported into the UK. So, under this loophole tiger skins from Gerard’s taxidermy company in Belgium can be imported to the UK.
The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), the zoo industry trade body, actually supports this trade. Its executive director Harry Schram told the Sunday Times that EAZA zoos were being actively encouraged to kill unwanted animals, including tigers, if other zoos did not want them and if they were hybrids (i.e. not pure breeds. Schram said that such animals take up space, food and keeper time and euthanasia of the animals was preferable to keeping them alive. The Sunday Times article is available in two parts at: part 1 and part 2 A video of the Belgian taxidermy company visited by undercover reporters can be viewed here: Zoos and ‘surplus’ animals – CAPS comment The trade in animals from zoos to taxidermists continues because of the huge number of surplus animals in zoos. In order to justify the alleged conservation role of zoos, and continue to get the ‘fluffy baby animal’ stories beloved of the media, zoos have to keep breeding animals despite the fact that virtually none of them will ever be returned to the wild. Breeding puts pressure on space and resources within a zoo as well as causing problems for the social structure of animals (for example, natural dispersal of offspring is obviously impossible in a zoo). As a result it becomes increasingly difficult to find other zoos to take animals, particularly older ones. Some animals will be sold to private owners, others are killed and dumped or for their skins. This is where the ‘surplus animal’ problem kicks in. Research published by CAPS, based on documents published by the zoo industry in Europe between 1999 and 2002, estimates that at least 7,500 individual animals in European zoos are ‘surplus’ at any one time – i.e. no zoo wants them. The scale of the problem is revealed when it is noted that the documents used for the basis of this research only represent zoos that are members of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), a body that represents just 10% of all zoos in Europe. The figures in the report published by CAPS are just the tip of the iceberg. During the period examined, surplus animals identified in EAZA lists included ‘popular’ zoo animals, with bears, chimps and lions showing an average of more than 20 surplus animals each per list. Among the 50 most common surplus animals were chimpanzees, baboons, macaques, constrictor snakes and Eagle owls. What happens to ‘surplus’ animals? Many are simply killed. While most of these ‘culls’ never come to public light, various reasons are given for the ‘culling’ when it is made public. The following are a few examples from UK zoos. In spring 2007, Dartmoor Zoological Park killed a number of fallow deer due to ‘overpopulation’, while in February the same year a wolf at the zoo was killed ('humanely euthanased') after being ostracised by the pack and no other zoo would take him. [Ref: correspondence between CAPS and South Hams District Council]. In January 2006, six male Mackenzie river wolves - the whole pack at the zoo - were killed at the Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland. The zoo claimed that the social structure of the pack had broken down and the decision was made to kill the wolves. The very nature of confinment in a zoo is obviously unnatural for a pack structure that would, in the wild, often change with some members leaving and new wolves coming in to try and take over a pack. [Ref: Aberdeen Press and Journal, 22 May 2006]. In January 2005, 2 wolf cubs and an adult female were shot dead at Dartmoor Wildlife Park. The vet reported: “Selective cull due to overcrowding and fighting in the pack” and “Further cull of cubs needed”. [Ref: Dartmoor Wildlife Park, routine vet visit record, 19.1.05] A government inspection of Dartmoor Wildlife Park in October 2001 found that “several significant dead animals” were stored in a food freezer “for taxidermy in the future”. [Ref: Report of Special Inspection carried out at Dartmoor Wildlife Park, 4 October 2001]. (Please Note: Dartmoor Zoological Park and Dartmoor Wildlife Park, although being the same zoo, were under different ownership. The incidents reported above in 2001 and 2005 did not take place under the current ownership). What you can do:
Photographs © CAPS |
The tiger skins offered to the undercover reporters were from animals just 18 months and five years old who died this year. Although the Belgian certificates to trade in the animals had Gerard’s name on them, the Sunday Times alleges that they had been tampered with and the original certificates were in the name of the Belgian zoos that had supplied the animals. When approached by the newspaper, the Monde Sauvage safari park, which supplied the tigers to Gerard, initially claimed both animals had died of “old age” but then claimed one had died in a fight (despite no damage to the skin) and the other from natural causes. The female cheetah had been supplied by Olmense zoo.