I will alert the king and the wizzard about this unfortunate incident.
What is this James Bond bullshit?
That really sucks :c I get why they did it, still.
Did Zuckerberg make it out okay??
I'm really not sure why it was so difficult to find home to only 500 lizards, that is not that many lizards. Are there honestly no professional locations out there that could take care of them?
addressed in the article
Can we drop the smugglers into liquid nitrogen too
"addressed"
Magnus Rothoff, one of the police officers involved in the reptile rescue, told the newspaper that the police in southern Sweden had been deluged with offers to care for the animals.
"We have received many requests from the general public, from people who wanted to take care of these animals," he said. "But when you suspect that these might be animals captured from the wild, we just can’t do that."
what more do you want?
can't just do what? they can't just find a professional wild animal handler but they do have the right to freeze them to death with liquid nitrogen?
Animals are property, when the zoo took custody of the reptiles they took over ownership. As it is their property they have the right to destroy their own property.
[quote]Unfortunately, the lack of information about the animals’ origins meant that they could only be passed to institutions, and as only 50 of the more than 550 helmethead geckos could find places at European zoos, the decision was made to kill the rest. [/quote]
Basically they had hundreds of animals which no one wanted to take, nor could be given away because they did not know anything about them. They couldn't afford the overhead costs and had to destroy them.
They said they couldn't do anything with them because they did not know where the reptiles came from. What do you suggest they do?
Article VIII of the CITES states that confiscated shipments should be returned to the country of export where possible, failing which they should be disposed of. The article stated that the origins of the confiscated animals were unknown, so returning them to the country of export was clearly not an option. Resolution Conf. 17.8 covers the disposal of confiscated specimens. Annex I in particular contains guidelines on the disposal of confiscated live animals. This section points out that transfer of confiscated specimens to anyone other than zoos, rescue centres, or academic institutions risks normalising the illegal trade of animals. The limited resources available to the mentioned entities means that confiscated animals of higher conservation value are given priority. In cases where a place cannot be found for the animals, euthanasia is often the most satisfactory option.
I am reasonably certain that there were plenty of solutions that did not consist of them being dead.
Properly identifying the lizards and confirming their safety with a professional could have resulted in them being safe to give away. Also as mentioned before I have serious trouble believing that there was not a single person who was professionally certified of taking care of 500 lizards even if they were potentially dangerous.
And the article clearly states that they had plenty of requests to take care of the animals, many of which probably came from professionals who could do it safely. So the only thing that the cops needed to do was to check their identity and certifications and then let them take the lizards.
They could not find a single dude in the ENTIRETY of Europe who could not properly handle wild lizards? really?
they've ruined 500 perfectly good lizards
The article only states that there were requests from the general public to take care of the lizards. It doesn't mention professionals. As for actual professionals, 50 geckos have been taken in by zoos. Most professionals don't want a lizard with questionable background, they want one that comes from a good breeder. Of which there are plenty.
It's a shame the animals were killed, but giving them away as pets would've been a worse option. The rescue center already paid almost $12k for extra terrariums to house them and employees were working overtime to take care of them.. At some point you've got to draw the line.
Or they've created 500 perfectly good lizard-pops.
I'm sure they could have located a person who did not give a shit and wanted to take them in because he didn't want the lizards to die. Maybe they could have tear jerked some millionaire into funding it or something.
Someone posted the law above your post. It answers most issues you brought up. The ethics aside yes it sucks to see animals get killed, but unfortunately that is the result animal smuggling. The zoo did it's best and It clearly did a lot before it considered putting the animals to death. What do you want the zoo to do? Keep paying for the overhead cost and risk going under? which would put more animals at the zoo at risk? Hypothetically if they kept the animals alive longer they might have been able to save a few more, but the costs could have put the entire zoo at risk.
Thanks, Sweden.
I understand that they probably thought it through quite carefully, I am just being upset in a verbose manner.
At least they died a merciful death. even if some of them got to live I personally question if a lifetime in an enclosed terrarium is even preferable to instantly dying painlessly for the critters. Reptile owners weird me out.
No, no it is not.
Then what is? Continue paying staff overtime to take care of them? Keep spending more and more on their upkeep? Have them take up space which could have been used to house more critical rescue animals? Run out of money to care for the other animals?
Discover their species and return them to their country of origin?
Rather them kill off the lizards then have to risk any of the actual animals who have been in the zoo for a while.
At first i thought it was like an accident. Like some interns carried a giant cage of lizards and dropped it into a canister of LN that happened to be there.
Jesus christ, total dismissal of animals as creatures with wants and needs like us. Total cognitive dissonance or sociopathy/psychopathy, very interesting that this viewpoint is very prevalent too.
oh no
Not always practical. We know what species they are, but absent any reliable genetic data on wild populations it's impossible to tell their country of origin. Even if their country of origin can be determined, Article VII of CITES also states that the exporting country is responsible for bearing the costs of having the animals returned. Considering these are usually poorer countries with less-than-perfect governments it's not hard to see why this isn't done more often.
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