Care needed for captive wildlife amid coronavirus venue closures
News
As tourism and travel dries up as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the survival of the wildlife at many captive entertainment venues could be at risk.
We’ve been in touch with our partners in the tourism industry to see how we can help captive wildlife survive this pandemic. Caring for and feeding animals, particularly wild animals, is expensive. Should the need arise, we’re looking at ways that we can assist given the extraordinary circumstances.
While we have an ongoing campaign calling for some of these venues to end their wildlife breeding programs and to stop using wildlife for entertainment, we are concerned with the welfare of the animals.
As the world goes into lockdown and the tourism industry dries up, it’s wild animals, that should never have been in captivity in the first place, that could suffer most, left abandoned, neglected and starving.
Elephants, tigers, dolphins and other wild animals trapped in the tourist entertainment industry haven’t chosen to live in captivity. They don’t belong to us – they belong in the wild.
'Build-back better'
The travel industry has been fueled by increasing demand by tourists to hold and interact with wildlife for selfies and close-up encounters. These interactions are not natural. They are driven by profit and hurt our relationship with wildlife.
We need to break this cycle of dependency and seize the moment to convince the travel industry to ‘build back better’. This term is widely used post-natural disasters to help address the root causes of a community’s vulnerability and prevent future disasters.
As we look to deliver emergency support for captive wildlife at tourist attractions, our work continues to encourage the travel industry to help us end the trade and exploitation of wildlife once and for all.
Director of Campaigns at World Animal Protection, Melissa Matlow said:
“The origins of COVID-19 have been traced back to the cruel exploitation of wildlife and the travel industry has an important role to play in the solution. By curbing the trade in wildlife for consumption, medicine, pets and tourism we can prevent future pandemics and end the suffering. We need to work together to change peoples’ relationship with animals”.
We are working with a number of travel companies to introduce wildlife-friendly tourism policies and with your continued support we can convince many more to follow suit and keep wildlife in the wild.
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As the world goes into lockdown and the tourism industry dries up, it’s wild animals, that should never have been in captivity in the first place, that could suffer most, left abandoned, neglected and starving.