Sunlight only falls in one place, concrete all around, a few ropes and an old car tire are meant to pass the time for the female gorilla – for more than 30 years. But the crowd at the privately owned Pata Zoo on the roof of an old Bangkok shopping mall wants to see more. And so an employee lures Bua Noi (“little lotus”) with a bag of milk. Finally she slowly stands up and comes closer.
Dozens of cell phones film and photograph the sad animal, the only gorilla in the entire country. The primate stares blankly at her audience. “His look has grown so tired from passing the bars that he can’t hold anything anymore. It’s as if there are a thousand wands and no world behind a thousand wands,” Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote about a panther. The rules seem to be written for Bua Noi. It’s the blockbuster of the Pata Zoo. The bleak area in which hundreds of monkeys, reptiles and birds languish is often referred to as the “horror zoo.”
Time and again efforts have been made to resettle Bua Noi in an environment where she can spend the last years of her life in dignity and surrounded by nature. Numerous animal rights activists and celebrities such as pop icon Cher have already campaigned for them. So far, about 117,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org. “They live alone, in a world of concrete and steel, without any stimulus. A life of boredom and loneliness is the cruellest fate of all for our primate cousins.” At times, it seemed like the drama could be moving — as it did last week.
Suddenly, the Thai Ministry of Environment said the owners wanted 30 million Thai baht (about CHF 788,000) for the gorilla’s release. After that, the animal could be taken to a zoo in Germany – because that’s where the monkey originally came from. It was not known which zoo it might be. But the announcement immediately made headlines.
The zoo itself later declined the request for money on its Facebook page, saying Bua Noi was too old to adapt to a new environment and was well cared for. Despite this, the primate’s fate has been on everyone’s lips ever since, not only in Thailand but also internationally.
In reality, according to research by animal rights activist Daniel Stiles, Bua Noi was not from Germany, but probably from Equatorial Guinea, where she was caught as a baby. A German animal smuggler brought them to Thailand in the late 1980s. “Bua Noi is not from a German zoo, but is a sad result of the wildlife trade. It was sold in Africa by a German animal dealer directly to Thailand,” said Daniel Merdes, director of the organization “Borneo Orangutan Survival Germany” (BOS).
With BOS Germany, Merdes has long campaigned for the liberation of all animals from the zoo – especially the orangutans and dozens of other primates such as lemurs and macaques, who must survive under equally disastrous conditions. For Bua Noi, the only solution is to take her to a shelter in Thailand. “It’s the only way she can spend her last years with dignity and in a natural environment. Another long, traumatic journey would be life-threatening or animal cruelty – be it in Germany or Africa,” the expert said.
Edwin Wiek is someone who has offered to take her on board. The Dutchman is the founder of the Wildlife Friends Foundation in Thailand and has been running a shelter with a lot of nature for years in Phetchaburi, about 200 kilometers from Bangkok. Recently, the tigers of the bankrupt Phuket Zoo were housed there. “We believe that it would be morally wrong to pay a huge sum of money for the peak of Pata Zoo,” Wiek told DPA news agency. 30 million baht is a lot of money for an animal that probably only has a few years to live. “We also want a deal to be struck for all the animals in the zoo — or at least the primates.”
But the owners of the Pata Zoo don’t seem interested – because the place is booming. They assure that Bua Noi is well. Environment Minister Varawut Silpa-archa now said: “The Pata Zoo has promised to take care of them until their last day. And as its owner, he has the right to do that.” What belongs to the zoo cannot be taken from the zoo – a lot has to be settled first. It is unclear what the alleged money claim was about.
“Gorilla in Alcatraz” was the title of a letter to the editor in the “Bangkok Post” on Monday – the choice of words is appropriate. Daniel Merdes says, “No animal should live in such a dark concrete dungeon. Not green, but gray and the shrill screams of the other animals. I can’t understand how visitors feel entertained here.”
Meanwhile, Bua Noi sits on the concrete floor, the only floor she knows. Again and again she inhales air in short bursts and stares helplessly at the ceiling. It looks like she’s crying, yes, sobbing. Gorillas and humans share 98 percent of their genome.
(SDA)