For a jaguar, crocodiles, spider monkeys or even a sloth (to name a few), it’s time to move. Eleven years after the adoption of a law on the protection of fauna and flora, the last two zoos in the state have closed. Police, veterinarians and officials from Costa Rica’s Environment Ministry transferred nearly 300 animals to a shelter on Saturday.
The animals were removed, one by one, by officials at the former Simon Bolivar Zoo in central San Jose and placed in portable cages. They were then loaded onto trucks and escorted by police to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, known as Zoo Ave and located on the outskirts of the capital.
Around twenty private zoos are resisting
“We are becoming a country without public zoos, with a vision oriented towards sanctuaries and rescue centers,” Environment Minister Franz Tattenbach told journalists at the Simon Bolivar site during the the transfer operation.
However, there are at least 18 private zoos in the country, which are not affected by the law. José Pablo Vázquez, from the Conservation Department of the Ministry of Environment, explained that biologists and veterinarians examined each animal. The Simón Bolívar Zoo and the Centro de Conservación de Santa Ana, also close to San José and also closed, belong to the state, but were managed by the FundaZoo Foundation.
A botanical garden
The two animal enclosures should have been closed in 2014, after the law was approved in 2013, but several legal appeals by FundaZoo to defend the concession delayed the closure for a decade, which finally happened this Friday in the expiration of the contract, which the government refused to renew.
“State-run zoos in Costa Rica make no sense. They cost Costa Ricans a billion colones (nearly two million dollars) per ten-year contract,” said Juan Carlos Peralta, director of the NGO Asociación para el Bienestar y Amparo Animal (Association for Welfare and Animal Protection). animal protection). He agrees with the authorities that the site of the former Simon Bolivar Zoo be transformed into a botanical garden-type green space in the heart of the capital.