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A zoo in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, said it killed 12 baboons on Tuesday despite protests. The zoo concludes its story rooted in concerns that there is too little space to accommodate growing groups.
The Tiagartennurnberg Zoo was first to announce plans to kill baboons that didn’t have enough space in February 2024.
It says it looked into offers to incorporate some animals, but none of them were able to make it work.
The plan attracted criticism from animal welfare groups. They also attracted protests at the zoo, which said they must begin preparing to kill the baboon on Monday.
On Tuesday morning, it announced that it would be closing the day for unspecified “operational reasons.”
On Tuesday afternoon, police said seven activists climbed the wall into the zoo and one woman glued her hands to the ground. The group was detained a few meters from the entrance.
Shortly afterwards, the zoo said it had killed 12 baboons. Deputy Director Jorg Beckman said the zoo chose to kill the animals, not pregnant women or parts of the study.
Samples were collected for research purposes and bodies were fed to zoo predators.
Zoo director Dag Encke told a news conference that the killing followed “years of consideration.”
He argued that having a group that could not be reduced by other means beyond the accommodation was causing the zoo to conflict with the Animal Protection Act, and that they needed to maintain a healthy population.
Animal rights groups filed criminal charges against the zoo’s management, saying they alleged that the killing itself violated the Animal Protection Act and that the zoo failed to manage its breeding.
“This killing is avoidable and from our perspective is illegal,” said Laura Zodrow, a spokesman for the Pro Wildlife Group, in a statement.
The zoo’s Guinea Baboon population grew to 43, too big for the home that opened in 2009 for 25 animals and young animals, leading to more conflicts between animals.
The zoo says that since 2011, 16 baboons have moved to zoos in Paris and China to take steps in the past to address the issue.
However, those zoos, and other zoos in Spain where baboons were previously sent, had reached their own abilities. Attempts of birth control were abandoned several years ago after failing to produce the desired results.
Animals are euthanized regularly at European Zoos for a variety of reasons.
Several cases in the past have sparked protests. For example, in 2014, when the Copenhagen Zoo killed a healthy two-year-old giraffe, they slaughtered the body in front of a crowd that contained children and fed it to the lions.
Additional sources •AP
