The City of Doncaster council has launched a health and safety investigation at Yorkshire Wildlife Park after a fatality in a big cat enclosure. William Chapman was killed by a Siberian tiger after he “allegedly climbed over a barrier into the animal’s enclosure” on Saturday, said The Times. Before entering the enclosure, he had been “dancing and wearing headphones” and was heard asking other visitors to take a photo of him.
Some are calling for tighter security measures at wildlife parks after recent high-profile incidents, but others argue that it is the changing behaviour of human visitors that poses a more serious threat to their existence.
‘Deeply tragic’
This is the “second serious incident at a UK zoo in just a few months”, said The Guardian. In June, a three-year-old boy was seriously injured in Cambridgeshire, after allegedly being thrown into a crocodile enclosure by a stranger. Police arrested a man in his 30s, but he was released after he was “assessed as not being fit for interview”.
Although this death is “deeply tragic”, there are “millions” of visits to wildlife parks every year, and these incidents are “vanishingly rare”, said Amy Dickman, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford. The “harsh reality”, however, is that it is “virtually impossible for zoos to stop people who are very determined to breach safety measures”.
“Zoos are actually one of the safest places you can visit,” Jo Judge, chief executive of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums, told the BBC. They undergo a “huge number” of risk assessments, as well as “full inspections every six years and periodic inspections every three”.
Modern zoos must find a balance between allowing visitors to be close to animals and keep them safe without being too “heavy-handed”, Dr Campbell Murn, a former member of the government’s zoo expert committee, told the broadcaster. There is already “enormous consideration” for visitor safety. “despite the best security systems and enclosures” sometimes “a determined thief will get into somebody’s house or somebody’s car”.
‘Props’ for social media
Safety at zoos is “not always only about keeping animals in, it’s about keeping humans out”, Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation, which campaigns for the abolition of zoos, told the Daily Express. Turning animal habitats into public attractions encourages a “very unnatural relationship with dangerous wild animals”.
Zoo safety has not worsened, nor are animals “somehow more dangerous”: “human behaviour itself has instead become a problem”, said The Telegraph. In 2019, a woman “climbed over a concrete barrier” at a zoo in Arizona “in a bid to take a selfie with a jaguar” before bystanders intervened. And in May, two American tourists were arrested in Japan after allegedly scaling a fence to enter the enclosure of Punch, a “nine-month-old macaque who captured global attention” after becoming emotionally attached to a soft toy. In the face of this human-led change, “zoos may now have to reflect not just on how they are run, but what they are even for”.
It is “unarguable” that phones and social media have altered the relationship between animals and zoo visitors. Where people would once have been “happy to see a photograph” of a famous animal, now they are “desperate to put their own interactions with endangered species” online. Dangerous animals have become “props” for content, and all too often individuals “endanger their lives” for clicks.