An Indian elephant called Boy, the pride of the Kiev Zoo, collapsed and died in his enclosure. Around the same time, Maya the camel succumbed to a digestive illness and Theo the zebra died after crashing into a metal fence.
And there’s more, much more.
The animals just keep on dying at the Kiev Zoo.
Animal welfare groups say dozens if not hundreds of animals have died at the zoo in recent years due to malnutrition, a lack of medical care and mistreatment — and some suspect that corruption is to blame.
Naturewatch, a British-based animal welfare group, is among the organizations calling for the zoo to be closed and its animals sent elsewhere in Europe.
“The Kiev Zoo will never attain any basic standards, it’s so far removed from any zoo in Europe,” said John Ruane of Naturewatch.
“The conditions have been absolutely horrendous and no matter how many more directors were appointed the situation still remained the same,” he said.
New managers appointed in October said that nearly half of the zoo’s animals either died or mysteriously disappeared over two years under their predecessors, and a government audit found that thousands of dollars were misspent as animals were illegally sold and funds earmarked for their food and care disappeared. Ukrainian prosecutors have also opened an investigation.
However, despite the management change, the zoo’s animals are still dying. Some activists suspect a secret real estate deal is in the works — that the zoo is being deliberately decimated so it can be closed down and the prime land that it sits on can be sold.
Other violations included the purchase of medication for already deceased apes, paying for hyenas that were never shipped to the zoo, the illegal sale of macaques and the misallocation of funds for feeding animals.
The violations totaled 1.6 million hryvna (US$200,000), according to Irina Parkhomenko, spokeswoman for the government auditing agency.
Once the jewel of the Ukrainian capital and a favorite weekend spot for families, the zoo began to deteriorate after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the years of poverty that followed.
Animals were kept in cramped, poorly lit and poorly heated enclosures, fed improperly and left unattended, according to watchdogs.
On a recent visit, the zoo looked desolate. The elephant’s pen stood empty, a lonely wolf paced an open-air enclosure, a collection of farm animals was closed to visitors and two giraffes were locked in two small indoor cells.
The zoo’s problems grew worse under the leadership of the city’s eccentric mayor, Leonid Chernovetsky, who has been widely accused of mismanagement. Under his appointed zoo director, Svitlana Berzina, about a quarter of the animals died and another quarter disappeared in the two years before she was ousted, said the new zoo director, Oleksiy Tolstoukhov.
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