Unethical Zoo, not Safari

While parks theme is "safari", which gave me the impression of all animals having ample natural space to live, this is far from the truth.

The promotion of the park is to protect wildlife. Yet - many of the big animals, elephants, wildcats, orange utans specifically, are held in no natural conditions.

Selfies + Feeding

• Parrots and other birds are there for selfies, sitting on trees or being carried by zoo keepers all day (this was the least disturbing)

• 2 baby Orang Utans (5 and 6 years old) are put 3h every day on a small space for pictures from tourists. One was visibly agitated, and aggressively pulled up by one wrist by a keeper and put forcefully on a platform further away. The keeper did not seem to have empathy nor animal education, rather like a random security guard to keep the Orang in check. After an hour of tourist interaction and aggressive zoo keepers keeping them in check, both Orangs lay hugging each other on the ground, immobile. 😭 It's called CHILD LABOR 🙊👶🍼

-----> I asked keepers, where the Orangs go after photo session: the 2 baby's go back to one mother and 2 other babies in a house, not their own mother. They are NOT with the tribe out in nature. The house were they go was not visible for visitors. Also, they are only released in nature, when they are 21 years old, so they are kept in captivity for 21 years. ⛓️

• Jaguars, 2, are kept in a terrarium of 17m x 3m with small 3m pool included. There is no space to retreat away from "eyes". They only have one tree trunk to lie on, it's not in nature! The yellow leopard frantically swims for time on end in the corner of the pool, which is right behind glass, where the tourists can take pictures with him. He can be fed through a little hole for extra cash. It's in the "rainforrest" trail, no forrest here. 🤒

• 2 Elephants are kept in a small circular hut that barely fits them both, with two guards for feeding for extra cash. One 🐘 was bobbing his head frantically and opened the rope himself for me to come in. Then he went back and wanted to take the metal bar from the barrier behind the hut and was yelled at. They are there 6h each day.

----> I asked keepers where the elephants go after their feeding session: "back to the cage" 🤢🤯

• Tigers: they have an open terrain of appr. 200m2, of which there is a small dirty green pool and dirty river, but no trees where to hide from "eyes". Much bigger terrain than for the 2 jaguars though and out in nature. They can be fed too. The white tiger sleeps right next to the terrarium glass.

• Small wildcat called "Serval" is kept in a 3m x 3m terrarium all alone in the building where to see Tigers. 🥶

• Baby deers kept away from their mother's in an open space with no place to hide in the petting zoo area, no trees. 🤔

• Komodos had a great big area, bigger than the two jaguars, and space to hide 🙄

----> some animals had a really good playground with options to hide while the even more exotic and bigger ones were clearly put on "display" in an unnatural area all day every day, no safari wildlife for them - ever 😐

Animal Presentations

• Tiger presentation & Elephant presentation 2x a day, involving a story of them being hunted and killed, and the animals are made to pass through the show several times from left to right, while hundreds are watching and a noisy presenter narrates the story and humans are theatrically acting the killing of animals 🤮

Jingle Music

• the whole park plays loud jingle music everywhere, was stressing me out, I wonder about the animals 🤕

Safari Tour

• every 5 minutes a full jeep of tourists passes through the park 9 - 5pm + at night to show the animals in the "safari" area. Deer and cows, giraffe had a good size area, elephants were crammed on 15m x 15m, no space to roam. Lions had a relatively small area too, no place to hide, always on display. Hippos were hiding in a tiny pond, where the jeep drives through.

Zoo Keepers

• are only trained on-site, they have no zoo keeper or animal education prior to this job whatsoever. 🤯