Once again an uninformed and childish post in my opinion. Do you not understand or realize the depth of influence and volume of negative information that CAPS and Born Free have collated to support this next weeks pressure on the EU when voting to change the law on keeping wild animals in captivity? you should catch up quickly as this is the most in depth onslaught on European Zoos in 15 years ! and you are all supplying them with ammunition with most of the posts made ! most of you will not have a clue to the fact they have been collating this information from Zoo Chat for the past 4 years at least amongst other sources to make this real threat to zoos in Europe via the LAW. regards
South Lakes Wild Animal Park South lakes news
- Thread starter kiang
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bigcat speciali
Well-Known Member
Born Free Foundation, Advocates For Animals, CAPS, and many others, have a very narrow minded view on what is good or bad, what is or is not a zoo and why zoos and parks operate. Having read an article a few years ago where the BFF had in their own establishments big cats which paced and had all the hall-marks of what they rant on about to other zoos, then at Glasgow they helped along with the Bridget Bardot Foundation to bring back an Asiatic Black Bear which had terminal cancer, they helped pay for the travel and other small costs, two weeks later after the bear had arrived they then stuck the boot in and said bad things about the zoo, its enlcosures and the bear. To be truthful and open, I feel that such groups are so anti-zoo that no matter what good is done, such groups will always put pressure on the likes of law and how the public see the zoo world.
A few points re the above and your other recent postings:
1. Firstly I think you have an imbalanced view of ZooChat due to the fact that you only ever seem to post (and I assume read) on threads relating to South Lakes. This place is a little bit "marmite" to a lot of people and therefore there will always be some negative postings relating to the place. Personally I'm somewhere in the middle, I don't think the place is as faultless as you seem to believe but, whilst making mistakes (who doesn't), I also think it has done a number of positive things for the zoo community and conservation. If you read around the website a bit more I'm sure that you'll discover that, although there's occassional spats and idiots and a few inane but harmless threads, generally the site is a force of good for the zoo community and zoo enthusiasts;
2. I'm sure some of the animosity towards South Lakes originates from David Gill's & your own public personas -if every issue is dealt with verbally aggressively on a black/white (rather than shades of gray) basis then South Lakes is not going to win any friends. I often wonder, and would be grateful if a more neutral member from the South Lakes area could enlighten me, whether the seemingly daggers permanently drawn situation between South Lakes and the local council could have been avoided if either of the parties had been more conciliatory?
3. Don't be so cryptic about your alleged threat, from the antis, to European zoos. I'm sure if you explained the situation clearly and engaged the sites members (who I'm sure explain the benefits/enjoyments of zoos to their less zoo-orientated friends/work colleagues on a regular basis) they'd be concerned and do whatever they thought they could;
4. Your term "zoo philes" is a bit wide of the mark. That term would imply we're so obsessed with zoos we'd be blind to any shortcomings and wouldn't be critical or have personal favorite/unfavoured ways of doing things. i.e. important components of opinions (part of a democracy and nothing to fear provided everyone, yourself included, is free to argue their point). Your perspective seems to be be that nothing critical of zoos (or is it just South Lakes
) should be posted on ZooChat. The fact that anti-zoo organisations may trawl the site looking for quotes to support their argument ("source: opinioned poster on pro-zoo website" is not really convincing is it?) would never stop me posting a critical point of different opinion about a zoo. As someone once said, "a life lived in fear is a life half lived";5. Personally, given that CAPS meagre financial "earnings" (I don't know about Born Free) is an absolute fraction of the takings of any one of the UK's top 30 or 40 biggest zoos I'm appalled that the zoos, with their superior resources can't get together and get their point accross. Let's face it they don't really have popular support or a great argument (when you cut through their propaganda).
Knaresborough?