From: Sean Whyte via e-mail
Sabah’s Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Masidi Manjun, already presides over the truly dreadful (don’t take my word for it – check TripAdvisor comments) Zoo, namely Lok Kawi, he now wants a second zoo.
If your life is going well for you and one day you feel a desire or need to become depressed, then visit Lok Kawi Zoo – for that matter any establishment keeping wild animals in captivity in Sabah. If you care about animals, you will soon be in tears and needing counselling. Sadly, unlike you or me, caged animals have no way to help themselves, do they?
Rather than invest in bringing Lok Kawi up to standard, the minister wants to spend money incarcerating more wild animals. This time, at Penampang. What is environment friendly about imprisoning wild animals and birds in cages?
The minister could, or, rather should, also be investing in the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, making it into something respectable and not the circus it has become.
The Sabah Wildlife Department has convincingly demonstrated, time and again, when it comes to managing a zoo, it is negligent and thoroughly incompetent. Clueless.
Call me cynical. I don’t mind. I have many good reasons to be. But this announcement of a new zoo, coming at the same time as a Japanese Zoo goes to great lengths to obtain and donate some new trucks for the Sabah Wildlife Department, makes me wonder if a ‘deal’ is in the pipeline. Does the Japanese Zoo want something in return?
Does anyone for a second, think the management of the Japanese Zoo sat around a table one day thinking up ways to create work for themselves, by soliciting new trucks to give away to a government body thousands of miles away? Really?
Why stop at a second zoo?
I wonder. Will Sabah’s normally muted NGO community raise any objections to a new zoo?
How about opening up Sabah to some trophy hunting? I’m told Russian, Chinese and American game hunters will pay big bucks to shoot practically anything in the wild. Elephants killed by a bullet from a fee-paying, gun-toting, animal-hater, would save someone from poisoning more elephants, wouldn’t it?
Where will the minister of environment draw the line at permitting people to exploit, abuse and kill wildlife for money?
Sean Whyte represents Nature Alert.
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