Thousands of animals at Kyiv’s Mykolaiv Zoo, Ukraine’s largest, are trapped and risking their lives under Russian bombs, four of which have already fallen on the site. Zoo officials say they have no means of evacuation because they are on the front lines of the war with Russia and weather conditions are too harsh to transport them. It’s been three weeks since Mykolayiv Zoo, founded 120 years ago, closed its doors, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe from Moscow’s rockets.
The first fell on February 27, destroying the walking corridor along the tiger and polar bear den. Since then, three more missiles have reached the zoo and struck the aviary of the wild goose, a rare bird featured on Ukraine’s traditional coat of arms. “Even though no one was injured, either among the staff or about 4,000 animals, a particularly stressful episode was an armored car battle just 600 meters from the zoo,” said the director, Volodymyr Topchy. Two Hurricanetype rockets, cluster bomb grenades, are also lined up on the wall of the zoo’s administration building.
About half of the 400 species found in the zoo are on the Red List of World Threatened Species, but at the moment their evacuation from the city to areas still controlled by the Ukrainian army is not possible. “It’s still very cold and if we take away giraffes, elephants and hippos, they risk not surviving. Then there are not enough means of transport to take away all the animals, and besides, the only road to Odessa is very crowded,” said the director of the zoo. Despite extreme working conditions and all sorts of difficulties, about a hundred employees continue to work “heroically” and take care of the animals “that we don’t want to give up”.
In order to avoid dangerous journeys, some employees of the zoo sleep on the spot and sometimes take their relatives with them. “Despite the chaos, the animals at the zoo continue to feed and breed regularly. So far they are doing well and living peacefully,” Topchy assured. On March 8, under intense bombing, a female ocelot gave birth, and six days ago a baby rhino named Kiev saw the light of day.
“It’s spring and births are beginning,” concluded the director of the Kiev Zoo. In early March, some clubs, including SaveWild Foundation and Bear Sanctuary, managed to remove tigers, lions and caracals from other Ukrainian structures, and after an odyssey of six days and eight hours in the cold before crossing the border, they arrived safe and sound, too when they are hungry, at the Poznań Zoo in Poland. The biggest risk for predators is that they could starve in Ukraine as there is not enough meat to feed them.
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