The importation of giraffes and other animals from Africa by a private zoo in Tainan would encourage the “dirty trade of wildlife” across international borders, three animal rights organizations said yesterday.
It would also threaten global wildlife conservation efforts, the Taiwan Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (TSPCA), the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) and the Taiwan Animal Equality Association said in a statement.
The Wanpi World Safari Zoo in Syuejia District (學甲) is the largest private zoo in southern Taiwan and plans to introduce giraffes, white rhinos, antelopes and zebras from Eswatini, the groups said.
They urged the zoo’s administrators to reconsider the role and management of a modern zoo, and said that the Forestry Bureau, which is responsible for reviewing imports and exports of wild animals, should revoke the zoo’s import permit so that the nation’s international conservation image would not be damaged.
TSPCA executive director Connie Chiang (姜怡如) told an online news conference that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016 raised the status of giraffes to “vulnerable” on its Red List of Threatened Species.
In 2010, the IUCN categorized giraffes as a “least concern” species, the list’s Web site showed.
The IUCN’s justification for the updated assessment was that in the 30 years before 2016, the population of giraffes had declined nearly 40 percent, Chiang said.
At the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora’s (CITES) 18th Conference of the Parties in 2019, members also for the first time listed giraffes in CITES Appendix II, requiring effective trade controls, she said.
CITES Resolution 9.5 states that in the trade of species included in Appendix II with states not party to CITES, the exporting country should be required to provide “non-detriment findings,” as well as “legal acquisition findings,” she said.
However, the bureau allegedly did not require such documents before issuing a permit to the zoo, she said.
The subspecies that the zoo says it plans to import — the reticulated giraffe — is native to Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and not Eswatini, EAST deputy chief executive Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said.
She asked how the bureau could be certain that the giraffes the zoo plans to import were not involved in wildlife smuggling.
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