The state of West Bank Zoo

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POSTED ON 17/11/06

 

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Strife feeds the blues at West Bank zoo

 

CAROLYNNE WHEELER

 

Special to The Globe and Mail

 

QALQILYA, WEST BANK -- Here on the edge of the West Bank, in a city almost

entirely encircled by Israel's security barrier, a tall, sandy-haired South

African is pining for a mate.

 

Ruti the giraffe is one of the star attractions at the West Bank's only zoo,

a struggling but well-kept operation that has been a source of delight to

Palestinian children for 20 years.

 

But Ruti's existence is a lonely one, with most days spent roaming around

her enclosure and dipping her head to bat her eyes at the zoo's few

visitors. Once, she had a partner, an equally striking giraffe called

Brownie with whom she'd conceived a son.

 

But the peace and relative prosperity of the zoo in the late 1990s, when

groups came from around the West Bank and even Israelis would venture in to

pay the five-shekel ($1.30) entry fee, gave way to the *intifada *in 2000.

The number of visitors dropped off, employees had to work under curfew,

three zebras perished after tear gas was fired near their enclosure. And in

2002, during an Israeli incursion into the city, soldiers fired at

demonstrating students from a nearby high school, and Brownie, terrified and

galloping around his enclosure, ran straight into a metal pole. He fell over

and died, leaving Ruti alone.

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The problems did not stop there. " The female became so sad at losing her

partner that she stopped eating, " said Sami Khader, the zoo's veterinarian.

Two weeks later, their baby giraffe was stillborn two months prematurely.

 

Four years later, the zoo still cannot find a mate for Ruti, now middle-aged

at 13. Her loneliness is part politics, part economics: A new giraffe would

cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and transport, money the

cash-strapped zoo would have difficulty raising. Most of its visitors now

come from Qalqilya and the immediate area, since travel restrictions prevent

many West Bank residents from getting here. The zoo has gone from a modestly

profitable venture taking in 2.5-million shekels ($660,000) annually to a

money-losing operation that takes in just 130,000 shekels ($34,000) a year.

 

There's another problem: Import and export laws for exotic animals have

grown tighter, and, given the added procedures of getting an animal into an

Israeli port and cleared for release to the West Bank, the zoo must now rely

on Israeli zoos and safaris. But convincing Israeli zoos to deal with a West

Bank counterpart, in a town where the municipal council is run by Hamas, is

also not an easy matter.

 

" During the years, there was always good co-operation between the zoos. But

today it's not so easy from a political point of view. There are problems

and for me to convince today a zoo in Israel to donate an animal to a zoo in

the West Bank is not so easy, " said Motke Levison, the Israeli vet who

helped found the zoo and still visits and provides advice.

 

So Ruti remains alone, though Brownie is still very much on display -- a few

hundred metres away inside the Qalqilya Scientific Museum, where Dr. Khader,

also a taxidermist, has stuffed him. The cuts on his underbelly are still

visible, his lips are pulled back over his teeth, but he towers majestically

over the other animals who have fallen victim to tear gas, fright and

illness: monkeys, zebras, mountain deer, a hyena and an ostrich among them.

Ruti and Brownie's dead son, preserved after he was delivered, is there,

too.

 

Among the zoo's other lonely hearts are a four-tonne hippopotamus named

Dobi, which specializes in showing off his enormous incisors, and a bear

named Ramu, whose primary pleasure now is eating past-dated chocolates and

cookies supplied by zoo staff. Three castrated lions donated by an Israeli

safari several years ago, now lazing about on a concrete block and licking

each other contentedly, are the only ones who seem unconcerned by their

somewhat cramped surroundings.

 

" They [israeli zoos] keep saying, 'We will give you better animals if the

housing improves.' In their opinion, this is not acceptable housing. They

consider this a prison, " said Said Daoud, the zoo's manager, of their

efforts to obtain new animals.

 

But zoo officials, struggling on a limited budget, are making an effort.

They've built the zoology museum and a small botanical garden, and are now

working on a small agricultural museum. The swimming pool inside still

operates every summer, and a shiny new playground -- courtesy of the

municipal council and Bill and Melinda Gates -- sits waiting to be used.

 

And Dr. Khader and Mr. Daoud proudly show a project to build a dozen or so

new, larger enclosures for the exotic animals already in their possession

and the ones they hope to obtain. Among their dreams, besides a mate for

Ruti, is an elephant, and a pair of lions for breeding, since their present

lions have neither manes nor roar.

 

" Palestinians are so demoralized they don't even come to the zoo. In Israel,

a zoo is a happy place, " Dr. Khader said. " We are on the edge of survival

here. "