The Buenos Aires Zoo is shutting down and transferring most of its animals to wildlife sanctuaries, the mayor of Argentina’s capital announced Thursday.
“This situation of captivity is degrading for the animals, it’s not the way to take care of them,” Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta said at a ceremony, according to The Guardian.
Most of the zoo’s 2,500 animal residents will be transferred to animal sanctuaries or nature reserves, while the 44-acre zoo site will be converted into a ecological park promoting conservation, the BBC reported. Around 50 animals will stay at the site because their health conditions or age make transporting them too risky.
The zoo, founded in 1875, has come under fire in recent years from critics of some animals' living conditions. In 2012, the zoo’s polar bear, Winner, died on Christmas morning from a combination of overheating and stress from local fireworks.
Two sea lions at the zoo died in August of last year, one due to stress and another from overfeeding. And in October, the Buenos Aires Herald reported on a slew of complaints about the zoo from animal rights groups, city legislators and zoo workers themselves. The outlet painted a depressing picture of the zoo, citing a bored elephant stuck alone in a patch of dirt and a Siberian tiger “that whimpers as it paws on the glass wall.”
Attorney Gerardo Biglia, who was involved in campaigns to close the zoo, said in a statement that the shutdown seems only natural.
“I think there is a change coming for which we are already prepared because kids nowadays consider it obvious that it’s wrong for animals to be caged,” he said.
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