Activists marketing campaign for shackled aged zoo elephants to be launched in Vietnam

The therapy of two aged elephants on the Hanoi public zoo has drawn outrage in Vietnam, with animal rights teams demanding the pair be relocated.

The teams are calling for the 2 feminine elephants — Thai and Banang — to be launched to a nationwide park, and near 70,000 individuals have signed a web-based petition in assist.

Vietnamese state media have additionally coated the story extensively in latest weeks.

On Wednesday morning, the pair’s legs have been in chains as zookeepers fed them grass and sugarcane, AFP journalists noticed.

“The elephants are fairly fierce. With a damaged electrical fence, we needed to chain them,” a zoo workers member instructed AFP on the situation of anonymity.

Employees stated the 2 elephants have been dropped at the zoo from the nation’s south and central highlands in 2010 and 2014.

“They weren’t in the identical herd. We needed to do our greatest to assist forestall combating between them and guarantee security for carers,” the zoo worker stated, including that the animals have been effectively cared for and given three meals a day.

However Animals Asia despatched a letter to metropolis authorities earlier this month urging the creatures be returned to the jungle on the Yok Don Nationwide Park within the nation’s central highlands.

“Elephants on the Hanoi zoo have been chained for a really lengthy interval,” the group stated within the letter.

“The well being of the 2 elephants will deteriorate if they continue to be as they’re.”

Vietnam Animal Eyes, a bunch of native animal advocates, began a petition to take away the pair from the zoo at first of August.

Zoo director Le Si Dung, nevertheless, has characterised the push to free the animals as “illogical,” based on state media.

“The 2 elephants, aged 60-70 years previous, have been at our zoo for greater than 10 years. …They are going to die if they’re put again to nature as they have no idea methods to search meals or defend themselves,” Dung was quoted as saying by the Dan Tri information website.

David Neale, animal welfare director at Animals Asia, instructed AFP the elephants have been seemingly annoyed by not having the ability to perform their pure behaviors.

“Yok Don Nationwide Park … has all the parts which an elephant wants to have the ability to reside effectively and reside fortunately,” he stated.

Different animal lovers consider the zoo shouldn’t be serving the elephants’ finest pursuits.

“This (Hanoi) zoo is sort of a jail,” social media consumer Thanh Nguyen stated. “I used to be livid after my first go to there final 12 months… I’d by no means return.”

In response to environmental teams, Vietnam’s wild elephant inhabitants has fallen from round 2,000 in 1980 to about 100 in 2022.

The variety of domesticated elephants has additionally declined considerably from about 600 in 1980 to 165 right now.