EDITORIAL: Beluga rescue doomed by good intentions

To paraphrase the words of Scottish poet Robert Burns: The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. The airlift of belugas and dolphins from the now-closed Marineland theme park in Niagara Falls, while well-intentioned, has not been a whale of a success.

What was supposed to be a rescue operation to move these magnificent creatures out of captivity has proven a death sentence for many of them.

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This week, a California aquarium announced a beluga from Marineland died after the rescue. Five belugas and a dolphin have also died. Four belugas died at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. Autopsies discovered the animals had chronic inflammatory disease and intestinal problems.

In 2019, the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act made it a Criminal Code offence to keep a cetacean in captivity. It also criminalized breeding whales, belugas and porpoises.

In 2021, Ontario’s Animal Welfare Services found all marine mammals at Marineland were in distress due to poor water quality. The park denied the allegations. In 2023, a whale dubbed the “world’s loneliest orca” died of a bacterial infection after spending 40 years at Marineland. Prior to her death, Kiska was seen floating listlessly in the tank.

Activists offered no logistical way to free these aquatic mammals. Experts told us the beautiful creatures couldn’t be released into the wild. It’s hard to see how that would be worse than the airlift. At least that would have given them a brief taste of freedom before they expired.

Suggestions that they be euthanized were met with outrage. In hindsight, it would have been more humane to destroy the animals peacefully in an environment they knew. Instead, they were flown around the globe in a quixotic search for a better life. The federal government refused to provide cash to bail out Marineland, as the park wouldn’t provide financial records. The land the park is on is worth millions, but not with sea creatures stranded on it.

The emotional impulse by do-gooders to find a better life for these mammals is understandable. But it wasn’t thought through. They might just as well have floated the beleaguered creatures over Niagara Falls and into the abyss.

As it is, the doomed, sentient animals were trapped between human apathy and government ineptitude. Too bad. They deserved so much better.

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