Wolf escape from Skanes Animal Park - at least 4 shot dead according to the newspaper

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Dan

Dan

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How utterly ironic and sad that just one week after the infamous general hunt on wolves in Sweden was started, some (or possibly all) of the wolves at Skanes Animal Park have escaped and several been shot dead. The park will issue a press statement tomorrow Sunday. In the meantime the newspapers are speculating on 4 - 12 animals having been shot dead. Apparently, the visitors were evacuated.

I was actually planning on visiting the park tomorrow, planning to take pictures of Nordic animals in the snow...
 
Dan said:
How utterly ironic and sad that just one week after the infamous general hunt on wolves in Sweden was started, some (or possibly all) of the wolves at Skanes Animal Park have escaped and several been shot dead. The park will issue a press statement tomorrow Sunday. In the meantime the newspapers are speculating on 4 - 12 animals having been shot dead. Apparently, the visitors were evacuated.

I was actually planning on visiting the park tomorrow, planning to take pictures of Nordic animals in the snow...
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Plain dart and capture was out of the question? :confused:
 
Good question! I guess the details on this sad story will explained in the press release tomorrow...

Will keep you updated.
 
Jeez, that's awful :( RIP, beauties.

Back in the 80's, some idiot freed the wolves at the Toronto zoo and as one made it's way back to it's exhibit, it was shot by a keeper :eek: They're such a shy, skittish animal especially when not habituated to people, I doubt they'd go out of their way to hurt anyone unless cornered/grabbed and in that case it'd be out of defense.
 
Not comming in defense, but it's usually required to the Zoos to shot any animal that get's out of their enclosure and more specifically, if it gets out of Zoo property.

This apllies to all animals, especially to the ones considered "agressive" or pottencially agressive to human.

Plus, if I'm not mistaken any zoo that open has to sign a responsability form stating the above, that in no situation the humans will be in a danger. And let's be honest, many times it is safer for the Zoo (and for their laywers) to shoot any escape animal.

And to finish, at least in some zoos is standard practice to call police when a new enclosure is open or when the animals are out for the first times - just for the same reasons.
 
rillekolmard said:
Dan , have you been there today? Knew somthing more?
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No, I went to Copenhagen Zoo instead, because I did not know if Skanes Animal Park would be open today after what happened yesterday.

I have just got back from Copenhagen and very quickly taken a look at what the Swedish newspapers write today. This is the story:

Actually, already on Thursday this week two males escaped. They escaped by simply tearing the mesh fence apart with their own teeth. It sounds almost unbelievable but that is what the animal park claims and here you can see a picture of the broken fence that I believe was taken on Thursday. Click on the picture and it gets bigger. Note the blood, which comes from the wolves wounding their mouth and teeth while tearing up the fence:

http://www.skanskan.se/article/20100110/HOOR/701109980/1057/*/tragedin-skakar-djurparken

It was, however, possible for the staff to get the two males back into the enclosure and the hole in the fence was fixed. On Saturday, the same two wolves escaped again, by tearing the fence apart again. Pictures of this can be seen in this video:

Vargflock avlivades i Skånes djurpark - Webb-tv - Sydsvenskan - Nyheter dygnet runt

Two more wolves, including the alpha female, escaped and started attacking other animals in the park. One red deer, one roe deer and two sheep were killed. The alpha female´s escape created extreme excitement within the rest of the pack who started to jump up and down against the fence and wanted to get out as well. The four escaped animals were shot dead. There was no possibility to get close enough to dart them, says the animal park.

By now, evidently, it was total chaos within the wolf enclosure and it was decided to kill the eight remaining animals. It would not have been possible to create stability in the pack again, according to the park. Also, of course, they will have to evalute the construction of the fence, built in the 1990s. It obviously was not wolf-proof.

This must be the biggest tragedy ever in a Swedish zoo. I have never heard of anything like it. The wolf enclosure, almost two acres of natural forest, was my favorite exhibit at Skanes Animal Park.
 
Gosh Dan, Terrible story. Anything more you learn please post.

Dan said:
No, I went to Copenhagen Zoo instead, because I did not know if Skanes Animal Park would be open today after what happened yesterday.

I have just got back from Copenhagen and very quickly taken a look at what the Swedish newspapers write today. This is the story:

Actually, already on Thursday this week two males escaped. They escaped by simply tearing the mesh fence apart with their own teeth. It sounds almost unbelievable but that is what the animal park claims and here you can see a picture of the broken fence that I believe was taken on Thursday. Click on the picture and it gets bigger. Note the blood, which comes from the wolves wounding their mouth and teeth while tearing up the fence:

http://www.skanskan.se/article/20100110/HOOR/701109980/1057/*/tragedin-skakar-djurparken

It was, however, possible for the staff to get the two males back into the enclosure and the hole in the fence was fixed. On Saturday, the same two wolves escaped again, by tearing the fence apart again. Pictures of this can be seen in this video:

Vargflock avlivades i Skånes djurpark - Webb-tv - Sydsvenskan - Nyheter dygnet runt

Two more wolves, including the alpha female, escaped and started attacking other animals in the park. One red deer, one roe deer and two sheep were killed. The alpha female´s escape created extreme excitement within the rest of the pack who started to jump up and down against the fence and wanted to get out as well. The four escaped animals were shot dead. There was no possibility to get close enough to dart them, says the animal park.

By now, evidently, it was total chaos within the wolf enclosure and it was decided to kill the eight remaining animals. It would not have been possible to create stability in the pack again, according to the park. Also, of course, they will have to evalute the construction of the fence, built in the 1990s. It obviously was not wolf-proof.

This must be the biggest tragedy ever in a Swedish zoo. I have never heard of anything like it. The wolf enclosure, almost two acres of natural forest, was my favorite exhibit at Skanes Animal Park.
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Will do.

Makes you think though, doesn´t it? Animals gnawing their mouths bloody to get out of an enclosure that most of us here at ZooChat would consider top-notch...

However, the former director of the park has commented on the issue. He says that the current pack was "dysfunctional" (although giving birth every year). For instance, he explained, a pup (or young wolf, I don´t remember...) was suddenly missing from the enclosure in 2006. It had been mobbed by the pack, and the theory is that the rest of the pack had gotten rid of it one night, leaving no trace.
 
Dan,
Thanks for the updates.
It raises a few more questions, firstly the park staff knew that it was possible for the wolves to get out after the first outbreak a few days earlier, so they were somehow at fault by not making the fence stronger.
Sure I know that would be a difficult job seeing how big the enclosure is, but they could have been put off-show until the fence was made stronger.

Second lots of parks / zoo's will have this kind of fencing for wolves / big cats etc, that's a worrying thought.

And thirdly I feel so bad for the other animals that got killed by the wolves.

All around a terrible story.


Dan said:
Will do.

Makes you think though, doesn´t it? Animals gnawing their mouths bloody to get out of an enclosure that most of us here at ZooChat would consider top-notch...

However, the former director of the park has commented on the issue. He says that the current pack was "dysfunctional" (although giving birth every year). For instance, he explained, a pup (or young wolf, I don´t remember...) was suddenly missing from the enclosure in 2006. It had been mobbed by the pack, and the theory is that the rest of the pack had gotten rid of it one night, leaving no trace.
Click to expand...
 
The park claims to have had people on watch 24/7 since the first incident. But it is a big fence and there would be no way to strengthen it overnight.

Also, as far as I know - and I could be wrong here - there are no "off-show" enclosures at Skanes Animal Park. The animals live in enclosures made up of the kind of land that they would live in in the wild. From what I know, the animals are not locked up during the night. I really love this park!

So... indeed a terrible story, chizlit!

Though I bet that the wolf haters in Sweden must be pretty content by now - 40 animals down in only a week :eek:.
 
As the staff says, after the first incident, they just wanted out again. How much they improved the enclosure, they would try to get out, which would mean that the wolves would get big sores in the mouth. The only thing the stuff would have don better, was to put down the two young wolves who tried to escape a few days before. Then maybe this tragic escape never happened.

But because the staff receives such contact with the animals, it is of course difficult to kill healthy animals.
 
Some additional comments/observations:

The debate about this escape has been almost as heated as the one about the general hunt on wild wolves conducted just a week before the escape at skanes Animal Park (see separate thread. Thousands of posts on the net editions of the Swedish newspapers. Extremely vicious debate -lots of unfair criticism against the park, in my opinion. This time the "animal lovers" have "excelled" themselves, with unfounded allegations, conspiracy theories and down-right shameful insults against the director and her employees at the park. A bit of the opposite of the debate on the aforementioned general wolf hunt in Sweden, in which the wolf haters went ballistic.

The director of the park has held chat-sessions with the readers of the two leading morning papers in the south of Sweden. (The park is situated in the south of Sweden.)

Mainly, the newspaper articles the last few days have focused on the fact that the fence was not hot-wired. In response to this, the park says that this has been tried earlier but that the wolves were not put off by it.

The wolf enclosure at Skanes Animal Park is in fact even bigger than what I have written here at Zoochat. I have claimed that it is about 7000 sq meters big (close to 2 acres), but according to many newspaper articles it is in fact 10 000 sq meters (2,5 acres) big, with an additional 1900 sq meters "holding enclosure". I don´t remember where I got the "7000 figure" from, but apparently it was incorrect.
 
Official investigation carried out

An official investigation regarding the events at Skanes Animal Park has been carried out as a part of an inspection that should have taken place anyway, since the park´s permit is up for renewal.

The County Administrative Board finds no fault in the actions taken by the park and describe them as "commendable". In other words: Full support for the park´s decision to kill the wolves.

I enclose a link to the Board´s decision protocol, since I know that there are some non-Swedish forumsters who can read Swedish. So, if you are interested, here it is:

http://www.lansstyrelsen.se/NR/rdon...-91DD-D2C8885FA21A/162329/beslutdjurpark1.pdf
 
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