Les Terres de Nataé Animal rights group buying Zoo de Pont-Scorff

TNT

TNT

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An animal rights group is attempting to purchase Pont-Scroff Zoo, in France, in an attempt to "rewild" all of the animals held at the site.

Click the link to the EAZA news page, and select the most recent article to view the statement issued by EAZA.

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Have there been any similar events such as this in the past? This is a real worry when you consider the individuals that could be lost from EEP's/Studbooks if the proposals were to go ahead.
 
ThomasNotTom said:
An animal rights group is attempting to purchase Pont-Scroff Zoo, in France, in an attempt to "rewild" all of the animals held at the site.

Click the link to the EAZA news page, and select the most recent article to view the statement issued by EAZA.

LATEST NEWS » EAZA

Have there been any similar events such as this in the past? This is a real worry when you consider the individuals that could be lost from EEP's/Studbooks if the proposals were to go ahead.
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Similar... didn't 'Born Free' own the site in Kent where they kept cats in cages, before releasing generic hybrid tigers into India (actually not the 'wild', but just into larger cages)? - the site then being purchased by the Sampsons. I am sure someone can fill in the gaps, as it is not a subject I ever took much notice of...
 
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Excellent comment from EAZA regarding this move found in the last paragraph :

"EAZA therefore urges the public to consider if they really want to contribute money to what is a misguided scheme. €600,000 would make an enormous difference to conservation groups, and we would therefore ask people to consider donating to professionally administered and scientifically based conservation projects rather than to the ideologically driven pipe dreams of amateurs. Animal species are in serious trouble; we need serious solutions if we are to ensure any kind of future for them, and Rewild’s plans do not represent any form of progressive thinking in conservation".

Very impressive take down IMO , I just hope the public are able to see this and share that sentiment.
 
Apparently the group have raised the funds and "Have the keys"...
 
ThomasNotTom said:
Apparently the group have raised the funds and "Have the keys"...
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Apparently they have everything except that is common sense , long term vision , true commitment to conservation and even the tiniest shred of any logic.

I hope the media heavily scrutinize the future actions of those "activists" who have taken this zoo over as despite their platitudes and criticism of zoos they themselves will invariably make huge errors. These mistakes when they happen (and they certainly will) deserve to be thoroughly criticised, covered in the news and out there in the public eye for all to see as illustrations of how these kind of groups don't have a clue (or any genuine concern either) when it comes to conservation.

I really dont think this is an isolated case either and there are some extremely important lessons to be learned here. The worrying thing is I personally believe that this is likely to gain traction and continue happening in Europe , North America and other parts of the world and one day will actually become an impediment to ex situ conservation of species.

In Europe it is simply sad when these kind of things happen but in this part of the world events like these could be catastrophic for effectively conserving many species. I really hate to say it but I dont think that time is too far way.
 
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The price seems low for a fully functioning EAZA member zoo - even given French property prices. Did the owner chose to sell to the buyers, or was it a bankruptcy and bank foreclosure?
 
ThomasNotTom said:
This is a real worry when you consider the individuals that could be lost from EEP's/Studbooks if the proposals were to go ahead.
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In Australia animals that are part of managed programs (EEP equivalent) are regarded as property of the program and are recovered if a zoo goes out of business or sold to a buyer who does not wish to continue in the program. Is that not the case in Europe?
 
Andrew Swales said:
The price seems low for a fully functioning EAZA member zoo - even given French property prices. Did the owner chose to sell to the buyers, or was it a bankruptcy and bank foreclosure?
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From what I understand the zoo has been loss-making for years...
 
Such a pity. I visited a few years ago and while a zoo with mostly classic ABC animals, the location and exhibits are lovely.
 
What an outrageous atrocity!!!!!! What will be next? A terrorist group buying an hospital?
 
Is there anyway that EAZA can stop this? Surely there are rules or limits to who can run a zoological institution or at the very least they could away take the institutions animals that are in EEPs. Zoo staff should voice their opposition if they have any too.
 
I remember some time ago I read that PETA offered some money to SeaWorld in order to buy their orcas... it looked like an stupid joke and I never expected something like this could ever happen, at least not in a zoo member of important associations like EAZA.

I hope they do something to stop this (I mean... there has to be something they can do to stop this, I can't believe it is so easy for them to buy it) and I wish the best for the animals and workers.
 
MRJ said:
In Australia animals that are part of managed programs (EEP equivalent) are regarded as property of the program and are recovered if a zoo goes out of business or sold to a buyer who does not wish to continue in the program. Is that not the case in Europe?
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Unsure about Europe, but in the US animals are almost always owned by the zoos; if something of this nature happened to a zoo here, animals that are owned by other zoos could be recovered, but animals owned by the zoo in question (including ones held at other zoos) would become the property of the new owners. The only exceptions to this are species that are all owned by a single entity, like Congo peafowl (Antwerp), pied tamarins (Brazilian government), and maybe some native conservation program species owned by the US government.
 
Found the Tripadvisor website:
Zoo de Pont-Scorff : 2019 Ce qu'il faut savoir pour votre visite - TripAdvisor
And the campaigners website:
Click here to support Achetons un zoo et libérons les animaux sauvages ! organized by REWILD

I think EAZA has enough grounds to contact the crowdfunding platform to shut the auction as a scam.

The stated aim to 'free the animals' is improbable, simply by comparing funds with the number of animals (70 species, including many large ones: elephants, giraffe, rhinos, hippos, bears, big cats, antelope, crocodiles, zebra). Even a road transport of a large animal across Europe can cost 1000s of euros. Not to mention that almost all the animals are born in zoos and cannot survive in the wild, the lack of safe wild reserves etc.

The claim that animals are 'in life-threatening conditions' cited by the newspaper does not fit with the high ranking of the zoo on Tripadvisor. The above arguments should be understandable even to people who know nothing about animals and rabidly ideologically oppose the zoos.

Sad that people give money to such schemes. The funds of the activists, might just be enough to buy the zoo and pay for euthanasia of the animals. I hope EAZA will monitor the situation, both to save the animals which may need it soon, and to warn the public against such organizations in future.
 
Jurek7 said:
I think EAZA has enough grounds to contact the crowdfunding platform to shut the auction as a scam.
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There is no legal reason to do so.

Jurek7 said:
with the high ranking of the zoo on Tripadvisor.
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Ok, let's not get silly. TripAdvisor doesn't tell you much about quality of the exhibits, most people there rate the visitor experience as a whole. Also, general public usually have lower standards than zoo-enthusiasts, so you should always take TripAdvisor's ratings with big pinch of salt.

In recent days, many French zoo-enthusiasts on other forums called Pont-Scorff "the worst French zoo" so there has to be something to back the "bad conditions" argument.

FWIW, the zoo is apparently in cca 2m€ debt right now, so if Rewild wouldn't buy it, it would go bankrupt very soon. In a certain way Rewild saved the zoo, at least for a while...
 
Jurek7 said:
The claim that animals are 'in life-threatening conditions' cited by the newspaper does not fit with the high ranking of the zoo on Tripadvisor.
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Actually 3.5 is a very low ranking on Tripadvisor. If I was running a zoo with that ranking I would be very worried.
 
HOMIN96 said:
FWIW, the zoo is apparently in cca 2m€ debt right now, so if Rewild wouldn't buy it, it would go bankrupt very soon. In a certain way Rewild saved the zoo, at least for a while...
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Personally I think the zoo going bankrupt and the animals finding new homes at other establishments with better managed ex-situ programes would be a significantly more desirable situation than ending up in the hands of a group of "animal rights activists" with a Mickey mouse notion of conservation.

Also , I dont think this is really a situation that can be seen in a vacumn. In these social media saturated times a media event like this can have far reaching consequences and there have been similar "calls to arms" of this sort of thing in many countries around the world, including here in Brazil.

Unfortunately there was actually a similar situation mentioned somewhere in this forum that recently occurred in a zoo in Catalonia , Spain which had some very concerning impacts on important captive breeding programes.

Moreover, it bears mentioning that some of the most vitriolic animal rights movements occur in Nations and parts of the world with high biodiversity and where zoos house critically important ex-situ programes for endangered native species. In such regions these sorts of things would be disastrous.
 
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Yes! Barcelona Zoo seems to be in a similar situation with animal right groups getting control over the management of the zoo I haven't follow that case very close but if I am not wrong I think the future of Barcelona Zoo is very unclear and it can still change because it is a public zoo so with change in the government it also change the people in charge of that zoo. Although this is a very different situation in terms of who is in charge, the basic of these people trying to get in is kind of the same.
 
MRJ said:
Actually 3.5 is a very low ranking on Tripadvisor. If I was running a zoo with that ranking I would be very worried.
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Absolutely - unless the number of reviews is very low, and then the score can easily be distorted one way or the other. Once a fair number of reviews have been recorded, the resulting statistical 'bell-curve' of data usually produces a ranking of around 4.1 - 4.2, or so.
 
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