Tallinn Zoo is one of the proud zoo's in the world who has two beautiful Amur tigers - male Pootsman and female Speiga. We decided to celebrate the tiger day this year to bring these beautiful animals closer to humans and to shed light on the fact, that these amazing creatures are classified as endangered animals. The organizational part went extremely well and the media fell in love with our program. At 5 o'clock local time yesterday Pootsman stepped out to his outdoor enclosure to notice that we had hung up meat and left a meaty "ice cream" for him. He did find them interesting, although he started chewing on them after it started raining and most of the people disappeared. He's a wild tiger who's never really had straight human contact so he's also quite shy. He hid himself in the bushes and only the most enthusiastic fans got to enjoy the beauty of a beast.
Tiger day itself went by very well - people were happy, tigers were happy, media was happy (which is actually quite rare) - if it were not for the rain, the day would've been perfect.
BUT.
I woke up in the morning and one of the news I read, was about the poached lion in Zimbabwe - Cecil. If you don't know who's Cecil and what's going on, here are a couple of news articles about it:
And here's a Wikipedia page about it:
What the hell is going on - you may ask. This whole thing is twisted, because now I'm sort-of happy that something like this happened, because this is an actual problem in Africa. Poachers are killing rhinos, lions, leopards and other critically endangered species for the fun of it. Some organizations say that the money they get for a tourist to shoot a rhino, they keep the other rhinos alive. Well for all the rich people, who have the possibility to invest tens of thousands of dollars to kill animals:
DONATE IT FOR FREE.
Why on earth would you like to kill an animal that is seriously endangered? The whole species could die because of you. Congratulations, asshole, you just ruined a lot of things.
In addition to the thought of a Cecil being killed because he was a known animal, he was also part of an Oxford study and research, wearing a tracking collar. Now that's not all. Cecil was the proud leader of a pride consisting of 6 female lions and their cubs. Usually a pride consists of 2 to 3 females and one lion, but these guys decided to be more dangerous, more serious and a bigger threat to other lions, surviving and living well with a bigger group - which means there was also another male to help Cecil protect the pride. Now the other male is by himself - he can't protect six females from the attacks of other interested males. Did you know, that when a pride is conquered by another male lion, the new leader kills all the previous cubs so that the genes from the previous leaders wouldn't go on? Congratulations, Walter James Palmer. You are responsible for the probable death of quite a few lion cubs. Feels pretty amazing, huh?
Fortunately we have amazing people who are doing their best to save and protect these animals, so help your local or international organization with your time or money - both are just as important. Share the news, tell your friends and be on the good side to fight the evil.
To brighten this rainy day, here are some more pictures from yesterday:
Kisses and hugs!
C.
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