A zoo in northern Germany has admitted they will have to euthanise animals rather than let them starve as they struggle financially during the coronavirus lockdown.
Verena Kaspari, the zoo director at Neumünster Zoo, has said: “We’ve listed the animals we’ll have to slaughter first.”
However, Ms. Kaspari added that killing some animals so that others could live would be a last resort and “unpleasant,” but that even that would not solve their financial problems.
The zoo has estimated that they will have lost €175,000 this spring, and as they belong to an association, they are not covered by the state emergency fund for small businesses.
Ms. Kaspari went on to reveal that the zoo may have to resort to even more desperate measures to feed their hungry animals, saying: “At the worst, we would have to feed some of the animals to others.”
Germany’s National Zoo Association (VdZ) explains how this type of business cannot go into hibernation and run down costs in the same way that others can, with animals still needing to be fed daily and looked after in a certain way. The chief of VdZ has confirmed that the lockdown is costing the average German zoo an estimated €500,000 a week in lost turnover.
German zoos are currently relying on generous donations from the public in order to stay functioning but have also appealed to the government for aid worth €100 million.
Zookeepers have revealed that it is not just the financial implications of the lockdown that are having a detrimental effect on the animals, but also the conditions that it has inflicted upon them.
A spokeswoman for Berlin Zoo has spoken out about how the animals are missing human interaction, saying, “The apes especially love to watch people” and the parrots and seals who are usually fascinated by their visitors, “for them now it’s really boring.”
Nathan Hawke, from Orana Wildlife Park in New Zealand, says they are experiencing similar problems, observing that many of their rare and endangered animals were missing the attention of humans and continued to show up for their daily “meet the public” shows despite the zoo being closed and no people being present.
In the UK, popular Colchester Zoo has warned that they may have to permanently close due to the coronavirus lockdown, revealing that it costs more than £25,000 per day to run their facility.
A spokesperson for the zoo said: “As we are in the unknown of how long we will be closed, it is very painful to say, but the future is very bleak. It is heart-breaking to say, but the realistic answer is that yes, there is every possibility that the zoo may be forced to permanently close if we cannot reach the finances that we will need if we are to be closed until September or even later.”
The zoo has yet to confirm what will happen to their animals if they do have to close permanently.
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