Political conflicts resulting in civil wars have a lot of victims. Among them animals. In Ivory Coast and Libya, which live internal wars due to Government power divergences, animals of the zoo end up suffering, due the abandonment of the facilities by the employees. There were days the animals were literally starving and thirsty.

Ivory Coast suffered with an intense civil war in the first months of the years and the zoo of the capital, Abidjan, was abandoned. These cost the lives of 39 animals, among them two chimpanzees. According to Serge Soirte, researcher and correspondent of GAP Project in the country, today volunteers are making efforts to help the animals that survived, as long as the Government itself does nothing to improve the situation. Just to feed the fruitarian animals, for instance, they need about USD 100 a day to buy bananas and mango.

In Libya the situation is not different. Around 700 animals of Tripoli zoo were in the middle of the fire combat – several cages have bullets marks – and the zoo was also abandoned by the majority of the employees. Several animals did not have food and water for days. In the last few weeks, NGO Four Paws International began a emergency relief mission to help the animals. Vets tried to save an old tiger that was much debilitated, but unfortunately he did not manage to survive.

Tripoli zoo was being reconstructed, but the activities were blocked due to the conflicts.

HOW TO HELP: The best way to help animals of Ivory Coast is through money donations. Details of international transferences can be informed by Serge Soiret – soiret_serge@yahoo.fr – and Kpan – Kpanwokapeu@yahoo.fr, representatives of GAP Project in the country.

To help animals of Tripoli zoo, the best way is to contact Four Paws International, which is directing effort in an emergency mission to check the situation and support the animals with what they need (recently the NGO made a similar work with zoo animals of Egypt). The e-mail of Four Paws is office@four-paws.org.uk .