Zoo stages wild protest
- Source: Global Times
- [03:02 April 13 2010]
- Comments
Zoo workers stage a sit-in with animals including two lions Sunday at a cycling field after efforts to reach a deal on land use failed. Photo: CFP
By Huang Jingjing
In a bizarre protest over land rights, zookeepers have moved two caged tigers, a lion and 10 emus from a zoo to a cycling field in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, dramatizing the zoo's request for return of green land equal to about five football fields.
On Sunday morning, two young lions and a Serbian tiger were found in steel cages at a bicycle training field belonging to the cycling administration center of the Henan Sports Bureau. The Zhengzhou Zoo menagerie included 10 emus strolling around inside wire netting.
"It's a protest, and we have no alternatives," Liang Jun, a zoo official, told the Global Times Monday. "It's raining. We took all the animals back to the zoo. But the protest will go on," she said without elaborating.
In 1984, to prepare for the first National Juvenile Games of 1985, the Zhengzhou government transferred 50 mu (3.3 hectares) of zoo land to the Henan Sports Bureau in order to construct a cycling field. The government promised that in two years it would give adjacent land of the same size back to the zoo, according to Liang.
Twenty-six years later, the government's promise has not been honored. "Repeated requests to the bureau and other superiors over the past years to make good on the promise all failed," Liang said.
The zoo is crowded and there's little room to make any improvement, Liang said.
"But the center has lent its land to private sectors like a driving school. If they return the land to us, we can build more facilities, including a scientific education center for children," she added.
The protest was ignited after a recent petition was rejected.
"On April 5, we received a petition letter from the zoo retirees. It said the cycling center had developed some commercial projects. We reported it to the bureau and made our request again, but the bureau turned a deaf ear to it," said a zoo worker, surnamed Li, the local Dahe Daily reported.
In protest, on Saturday night, the zoo sent about 100 workers to tear down the center's courtyard wall and transport the animals to the field.
"Our animals haven't had enough room to live. We want the land back," said Tian Desheng, 84, one of scores of retirees from the zoo who joined the protest, the newspaper said.
