Seaworld also wanted to similarly bring in Pascuala, from Mexico back in 2007, although activists blocked her transfer. It's a real shame as there's a strong possibility she would've had a better chance of survival at Seaworld.
From what I've heard, Morgan's pregnancy was the last straw for Seaworld. LP claimed it was an accidental pregnancy; but from what I've seen it certainly seems the pregnancy was intentional. Seaworld would've faced intense backlash, especially as they had indeed halted their breeding program.
That's what I heard too, but the fact that she received a 'break' from birth control probably says a bit. Could be for medical purposes of course, which we can't rule out, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was otherwise.
Fingers crossed this birth is successful.
Seaworld were in charge of operations there as the orcas were also owned by them, so they had to deal with all the issues that LP had with both the care the orcas received over there, and issues with the orcas themselves.
Loro Parque overall is somewhat of a disaster in itself. The park is known for their past ties with illegal animal traffickers which is how they got rarer parrot species. And the quality of care for the whales is also very concerning. They have had many issues with water quality, have a very poor enrichment and training plan, and are overall rather bad at handling publicity. They illegally bred Morgan which directly violated EU regulations and have lost three of their whales over the span of recent two years: Skyla and Ula in 2021 and Kohanna in 2022. All babies born at Loro Parque besides Ula have been inbred and the park as I said previously is terrible at handling bad PR which has worsened their reputation in the animal rights community. They will actively attack ARA and work to entirely disprove every negative comment made about the facility compared to other places such as SeaWorld and Marineland France which tend to not retaliate in the same manner. Because Loro Parque actually responds to the ARA, activists have continued to attack them knowing there will be a reaction. Now Loro Parque’s name has been dragged through the dirt so if Marinlenad were to send their pod to the Canaries, the bad publicity would come to them like what Loro Parque is currently facing. By sending the whales to Japan, there is still pushback but much less the catastrophe that would be sending them to Loro Parque.
Shanghai never officially announced her pregnancy but it is very clear that is pregnant. Hoping everything goes okay for mother and calf alike!
Makes sense, with the exception of the Moskavarium, this seems to be the norm for orca pregnancies; only Seaworld and LP having previously publicly announced pregnancies prior to the actual birth.
What is that british zoo? I have always been interested in zoo's responses to ARA's.
