A Gorilla Dies at the Cincinnati Zoo - Who is to Blame?

A few months ago, a zookeeper at the Palm Beach Zoo in Florida was killed by a tiger. The circumstances surrounding her death were not immediately forthcoming, but it was revealed early-on that zoo officials elected to tranquilize the animal rather than shoot it as it stood over the woman’s body. This resulted in a ten minute delay in allowing first responders to reach the woman. Condemnation of the zoo for not taking quicker action was furious. Fast forward a couple of months. A three-year-old boy falls into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo and is dragged around for ten minutes by a four hundred pound, adult male gorilla. Zoo officials elected to shoot the animal rather than tranquilize it, in order to retrieve the child. Now people are criticizing this zoo for shooting to save a person and not attempting to tranquilize the animal. Zoos, it would appear, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Who is to blame for the gorilla incident—the zoo, the parents, the child? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But here is what I do know. I worked with gorillas for forty years at three different zoos. Gorillas are gentle but unpredictable animals and they are immensely powerful. I have also seen hundreds of animals tranquilized and know how unreliable this can be. Tranquilizer guns are not nearly as accurate as rifles. A miss is not at all uncommon. Darts can misfire or an animal can pull out the dart before it injects a full dose. And an animal under stress can counteract the effects of the drug, even if it does receive the full dose. Attempting to tranquilize an animal can take an agonizingly long time, if it works at all.

It is a sad fact that, in today’s world, we find ourselves constantly second guessed and making decisions based on anticipated reactions on social and in mainstream media. I am sure the officials at the Cincinnati zoo made the right decision in saving that little boy, and I am also sure that they are shedding buckets of tears over their decision. To the zoo people who cared for him every day, that gorilla was part of their family—think about pulling the trigger on your own dog or cat.

So, what is the take away in all this? Maybe the zoo needs to beef-up its barriers. Maybe parents need to keep a close eye on their children when they enter a place where danger might lurk—like a public playground, a swimming pool, or a zoo. As for the little boy, there’s not much to be done about that. As the oldest of four boys with four sons and four grandsons of my own, I recall many times that, if I turned my back for a moment, someone would be too high up that tree or too far out in the lake—and we had the broken bones and stitches to prove it.

Ian Porter and gorilla 'Shani' (Toledo Zoo, 1992)

The sad fact is, accidents happen every day. Sometimes the results are tragic and often there is no one to blame. To quote one of my favorite children’s authors, Lemony Snicket, maybe it was just A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Strange Bedfellows: SeaWorld and HSUS are Partners

I am not sure what to make of this. It is the most significant and far-reaching animal welfare announcement in years. SeaWorld and the Humane Society of theUnited States (HSUS) are now partners, “working together as advocates and educators for the ocean and its animals”. The partnership follows Seaworld's decision to end its orca breeding program.

I have long been troubled by the keeping of orcas in captivity, so SeaWorld’s announcement that it will end its orca breeding program is welcome news. I suppose the animal rights lobby can claim a victory of sorts. I have always assumed HSUS was part of the consortium of animal rights organizations that opposed zoos, aquariums, and marine parks, but I can find no evidence of that on their website. Their main opposition, it would appear, is the use of animals like elephants, whales, and dolphins as entertainment.

Fortunately, this agreement appears to support what is good about SeaWorld and, by extension, the reputable zoos, aquariums, and marine parks. It includes collaboration and advocacy in the areas of wildlife conservation and the humane treatment of animals.

Nobody, however, should be surprised if HSUS continues to lobby against the practice of keeping whales & dolphins and apes & elephants in captivity at all. It is far better, I suppose, for us to be negotiating these issues as partners rather than as enemies, but I just can’t help but be suspicious that things are not as they appear to be. I am reminded of the apocryphal story about showman, P. T. Barnum.

Early in his career, the story goes, Barnum created an exhibit he called The Happy Family. The remarkable display consisted of a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a lamb all inhabiting the same cage. It was an amazing scene and when asked about his future plans for The Happy Family, he is said to have remarked that he would make it a permanent feature of his shows, “if the supply of lambs holds out”.

The Cecil Effect

People have been writing about "the Cecil effect" for several months, but I only came across the term in a recent article in the online UK news publication telegraph.co.uk written by Peta Thornycroft. I have already given my perspective on the killing of Cecil the lion by an American dentist last year in another blog I publish (On the Killing of Lions), so I am not going to rehash that here. But I am intrigued by the fact that the demise of a single animal is having such a lasting, and controversial, impact. 

Zimbabwe's Wildlife problem

According to Thornycroft, the outcry over the killing of Cecil the lion has caused other big game hunters to stay out of Zimbabwe where, as in many areas of the world, it is the hunters who support the economics of conservation. As a result, Zimbabwe's largest wildlife area, the Bubye Valley Conservancy, has an overpopulation of lions. Bubye's lions are decimating the populations of antelope and even reportedly attacking giraffe, cheetah, leopards, and wild dogs. As the area's top predator, their numbers will continue to expand unchecked unless humans step-in or until the food supply runs out and their own populations crash from starvation.

Contraception is not the answer

Some conservation proponents suggest that contraception is the answer, but this is hardly a workable solution. It would be too expensive and impractical to implement. Stopping breeding in any natural population is hardly the answer to a long-term, healthy population of animals. In the case of the Bubye Valley Conservancy, culling several hundred lions maybe the only solution.

Where are the "Animal Lovers", now?

Where are those animal loving protesters now? All of those people who were outraged, who wrote those angry posts, who picketed that dentist's office and tried to put him out of business. Their actions have placed hundreds of animals at risk. If they want to oppose hunters (and zoos) who support wildlife conservation with millions of dollars every year, they should be willing to step up and put their money where their mouths are.

Birth and Death at the Zoo

The two births at Chehaw WildAnimal Park caught my eye last week – a colobus monkey and an eland antelope. Zoo animal births are not an uncommon occurrence. Hundreds of animals are born at zoos around the world every week. But these two births were special to me because they occurred at my hometown zoo. I can go see these babies.

Unfortunately, deaths also occur at zoos. It is a byproduct of the circle of life. The Oklahoma City Zoo was touched last week by the death of a 37 year old Asian elephant named Chai. According to news reports, the elephant died unexpectedly and was the second to die at the zoo in the past six months. Chai became a bit of a celebrity last year when animal right activists unsuccessfully tried to block her transfer from the zoo in Seattle, insisting that she be sent to an elephant ‘sanctuary’ instead. Now these same people are railing against the Oklahoma City Zoo and calling for them to shut down their elephant program.

96 Elephants Every Day

The death of a couple of elephants at a U. S. zoo pales in comparison to what is happening every day in the wild. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, in 2012 alone some 35,000 elephants were killed in Africa, which works out to an astonishing 96 animals killed every day. The death of three elephants made the news recently when a British helicopter pilot was shot out of the sky and killed trying to stop elephant poachers in Tanzania. 

The vast majority of these wild animals die lonely, unknown deaths. If not for zoos sounding the alarm, nobody would notice. Zoos raise money for conservation and fuel the public outcry over these senseless deaths. If we do away with zoos, as animal rights activists would have us do, then we would not know that a baby colobus monkey is snow-white when it is born, that a mother eland hides its newborn baby in the tall grass, or that the life expectancy of an Asian elephant is about 48 years.

A Glimmer of Hope

Do I get emotional about the birth of a colobus monkey or the death of an African elephant in the wild? Probably not. It is the animals in my hometown, my state, and my country that draw my attention. They inspire me to care. That is where I learn about the tragedy of elephant poaching and that colobus monkeys are one of many species threatened by the bushmeat trade in Africa. The value of zoos (and aquariums) is that they personalize wildlife, stirring our emotions, teaching us respect for other creatures, and creating young conservationists in the process. We tend to care about what we know and what we know is what we see around us, not what is occurring in some far off land. In Oklahoma City, they mourn the death of an elephant while in Albany, Georgia we celebrate new birth. In both of these instances we can find a glimmer of hope for wildlife under siege.

Wildlife Refugees

Wildlife Refugees

In the fall of 2015, as the world watched a flood of Syrian refugees struggle to gain acceptance into the societies of Europe, another group of refugees from Swaziland was encountering opposition in the U.S.  Three U.S. zoos had applied to import 18 elephants that were scheduled to be culled from wild herds, and opposition by animal rights supporters was intense.

 Syrians and elephants

The comparison of Syrians and elephants may seem a stretch, but when a homeland is under siege or a specific group is being persecuted, seeking refuge in a foreign land would seem to be a reasonable alternative – for both groups.

When people argue against human migrations it is almost always on social or economic grounds. When people argue against animals being relocated to a foreign country they usually cite the need for animals to remain in their native land. Is that a double standard?

If elephant habitat is disappearing and they are being hunted to near-extinction for their ivory, is it acceptable to attempt relocation of animals to the U.S.?

Or should elephants, lions, and other creatures be forced to remain in Africa, even if that means certain extinction?

Would opponents be more accepting if zoos were more like ‘sanctuaries’ or ‘refuges’ and less like ‘prisons’?

What do you think?