North- American television aired days ago a drama that takes place in San Francisco Zoo, which is a testament to how zoos consider their animals mere entertainment objects for the public, without any other commitment.

At the Californian Zoo, three chimpanzees live for over 40 years: two females, Minnie and Maggie, 45 years old, and a male, Cobby, who arrived with 10 years old and is now in his mid-50s. The females arrived when they were babies, captured by traffickers in Africa, and Cobby came from the entertainment world, where he worked in movies, shows and television. Cobby is considered to be the oldest male chimpanzee in North-American zoos.

The direction of the Zoo reached the decision that they are no longer useful as entertainment and want to transfer them to another zoo, since there are no vacancies in sanctuaries in the country, which existed in small numbers and are crowded.

When this information was circulated, a movement was created to prevent the shuttle. Cobby’s first handler for 16 years, John Alcaraz, led the movement.

The criticisms that are made to the Zoo direction is that in all these years nothing had been invested in this group of chimpanzees and its enclosure, while more than 3 million dollars were spent in a playground for children and another million in a sculpture and in a garden.

The Zoo that is willing to receive them is a Safari Park, in West Palm Beach, Florida, home to another 19 chimpanzees.

Alcaraz believes that it would be a crime to send the group to that Zoo and join Cobby, who is old and unable to fight, in the middle of young chimpanzees; it would be practically a murder.

The controversy is armed, the group of Alcaraz and Kim Forwood, who launched a campaign to keep the primates in San Francisco in the internet, stimulated by ABC TV station program, handed a petition of thousands of people, addressed to the director of Zoos and Parks from San Francisco, so that the transfer plan to be aborted.

The advocacy group of the three chimpanzees considers that they are part of the city and would be a capital ingratitude, at the end of their lives, transfer them to another Zoo, with a group of great apes that would not accept them.

This North-American drama is typical of a society that is not aware that the great apes are subjects and not objects. The respect for this species – with whom we are historical and genetic connected  – should be an inviolable clause code of every country.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International

 The complete article and video: http://abc7news.com/533519/