FRANKFURT: A German zoo said Tuesday it had killed 12 baboons due to overcrowding in their enclosure, with animal rights activists breaking into the zoo in protest.
Police arrested seven demonstrators who briefly entered the zoo complex in the southern city of Nuremberg.
“We know that many will find this decision hard to understand, that it has annoyed, upset or infuriated them,” the management of the zoo said in a statement.
The zoo initially announced plans to kill some of its baboons in February last year, saying that their group had “reached a size that exceeds the capacity of the enclosure, which was already expanded in 2009”.
With the overpopulation causing “an increase in conflicts with corresponding injuries to the animals”, the zoo said that no suitable alternative to killing the animals could be found.
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But this argument did not convince animal rights activists, who staged a protest at the zoo on Tuesday.
The zoo was closed on Tuesday for “operational reasons”, which the activists took to mean the zoo had been closed for the baboon cull.
One of those arrested was a woman who had briefly glued herself to the ground behind the zoo’s main entrance before being freed by police.
Speaking at a press conference, Director Dag Encke said that Nuremberg zoo was acting according to the criteria set out by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA).
They stipulate that culling the animals can be a “legitimate last resort to preserve the population”, Encke said.
The zoo’s chief biologist Joerg Beckmann said that pregnant females and those being observed as part of a scientific study had not been killed.
The dead baboons had been fed to the predators in the zoo, Beckmann said.
Animal rights groups filed a criminal complaint Tuesday against the zoo for killing the baboons when they had been “in perfect health”.
“Animal welfare laws permits the killing of vertebrates only if there is a reasonable cause,” said Christoph Maisack, head of the German Legal Association for Animal Protection Law (DJGT).
“Letting them breed too freely cannot constitute such a reason,” said Maisack.