wellington zoo furore » Wellington Zoo

response from Wellington Zoo
30-03-2007

Dear Nigel

Thank you for your email and for sharing your concerns with us. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner, last week we were offsite at the Australasian Zoo industry conference. Wellington Zoo takes responsibility for health and safety and animal welfare very seriously. We ensure our animals are treated with the utmost regard for their welfare and care . We are signatories to the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria's (ARAZPA) Code of Practice and Code of Ethics. We also comply fully with the Animal Welfare Act regulated by MAF.

The incident you have referred to was an out of the ordinary occurence and an investigation was conducted. I am not at liberty to discuss details in order to protect the privacy of those staff members involved. As for 'gagging' staff members, all members of Zoo staff sign a code of conduct when they join the Zoo, and part of this code of conduct is that only appropriate media trained staff members will speak to the media. This is standard practice in most large organisations and zoos.

Our encounters are governed by strict health and safety protocols, all of which were reviewed at the time this incident took place. The scenario of a public encounter with the cheetahs, red pandas or any of our other contact animals is a completely different scenario to what occurred during the incident you have raised . To date we have held over 500 public encounters with absolutely no problems.

The motivation for our close encounter programme relates to the Zoo's goal of creating a place where conservation learning occurs. The Close Encounters programme aims to use the animals' natural behaviours to bring people face-to-face with some of the most fascinating co-inhabitants of our planet and the issues they face in the wild. Educational research shows that these kinds of experiences have high impact and create durable learning and action . Our aim is to forge strong connections between the animals and those who have contact with them. The feedback we have from people who have experienced these encounters is very positive with many acknowledging the power of the experience to increase their understanding of cheetahs and conservation.

In a world where natural habitat continues to be destroyed, people are living in more urbanised societies which are disconnected from nature and animals continue to be poached for their body parts, the numbers of many of the Zoo's species have declined to such an extent in the wild that many are in danger of disappearing. We believe that we have an extremely important part to play in conservation to ensure the survival of these species: the animals at Wellington Zoo act as ambassadors for their wild cousins.

Thanks again for taking the time to write to us.

Kind regards
Amy

As could be expected , very little was actually answered . But this is the official response from the zoo when I raised the issues with them .

30-03-2007

blah, blah, blah, blap, blap, blap...

30-03-2007

Yep, I have to admit that it was a disapointingly long-winded way of saying nothing

30-03-2007

pollie talk. i hate it.

nigel, maybe you should follow up with this straight question - one of your cheetah recently turned on a member of your staff in an unprovoked attack. what measures have been taken to assure that this particular animal will never again attack another person, particuarly a member of the public? a cheetah can cause significant injury to a person, with even greater risk to a child. is the possibilty of this happening again a concern for the zoo?

30-03-2007

pollie talk. i hate it. in australia this kind of talk is usually accompanied by changing a two syllable word into one and vise-versa. for example:

"what is known about the police"

would be pronounced

"what is no-wun about the pleece"

ever noticed it before? watch lateline, they all do it - it drives me mad!!!

anyhow, back on topic...

nigel, maybe you should follow up with this straight question - one of your cheetah recently turned on a member of your staff in an unprovoked attack. what measures have been taken to assure that this particular animal will never again attack another person, particuarly a member of the public? a cheetah can cause significant injury to a person, with even greater risk to a child. is the possibilty of this happening again a concern for the zoo?

letter to/from the zoo
01-04-2007

I didnt like the response any more than you lot do , either , but I posted it for the benefit of the forum .
I have responded with that exact question posed to them , and told them that some of us in the forum actually work in a zoo ( we are not just a bunch of amateurs ) and have expressed concern .
If/when I get another response , I will post it for the benefit of all to see .

25-06-2007

I just read this whole thread now, and I'm not going to get into the debate about what's right or wrong (coz I think it was stupid for the zoo to be taking cheetahs to schools anyway!) but I just wanted to point out that SAFE stands for Save Animals From Exploitation (not Extinction). They are what I kindly refer to as a nutjob organisation. They are opposed to ALL forms of animal 'exploitation', including zoos, owning pets, farming, etc.