Buenos Aires, Argentina announced this week that it will close its zoo amid concerns that animals should not be held captive.
Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta announced that his city’s zoo will be transformed into an ecological park, and stated animals should be treated better than they are, according to The Washington Post.
“This situation of captivity is degrading for the animals, it’s not the way to take care of them,” Larreta said during Thursday’s announcement, according to The Guardian. “Today this place generates more sadness than happiness.”
The 1,500 animals at the Buenos Aires Zoo will be relocated to Argentinian sanctuaries and overseas locations. Some of the zoo’s birds will be released into the city’s riverside ecological reserve, according to an AP report.
“Animals have to live in their habitat, not in the middle of buildings,” Mayor Larreta tweeted on Thursday.
Buenos Aires Zoo’s closing comes at a time where zoos worldwide have faced criticism for their treatment of animals. The Argentinian city’s zoo was criticized after two of its sea lions died within three days of each other in 2015. In 2012, the zoo’s polar bear and main attraction, Winner, died after dealing with high temperatures and loud fireworks during Christmas season.
Other zoos have faced similar battles. A Canadian zoo recently closed after the zoo’s director was charged with animal cruelty, and government officials in Costa Rica attempted to shut down all of its zoos in 2013.
Most recently, there was a lot of attention focused on the Cincinnati Zoo after it was forced to kill Harambe the gorilla after a young boy fell into the gorilla’s enclosure.
For animal rights activists, the closing of Buenos Aires’s zoo is a victory. Gerardo Biglia, an animal rights lawyer and activist that has pushed for the zoo’s closing for years, is happy to see the change.
“The most important thing is breaking with the model of captivity and exhibition,” Biglia said. “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.”
The new ecopark that will replace the zoo will be “a place where children can learn how to take care of and relate with the different species,” Mayor Larreta said. Some of the animals that are too old or sick will remain at the ecopark, including Sandra, an orangutan that an Argentinian court recognized in 2014 as a “non-human person” who has a right to freedom.
