TWO BY two, they were caught and lined up as an extravagant gift from one despotic regime to another.
According to conservationists, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe will send a modern-day ark – containing pairs of giraffes, zebras, baby elephants and other wild animals taken from a national park – to a zoo in North Korea.
The experts warned not every creature would survive the journey to be greeted by Mr Mugabe’s ally Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader.
There are particular fears a pair of 18-month-old elephants could die during the long airlift.
Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, said elephant experts did not believe the calves would survive the journey separated from their mothers.
Mr Rodrigues, whose taskforce is an alliance of conservation groups, said all the animals were captured on Mr Mugabe’s orders to be given to North Korea. He cited witnesses and officials in the western Hwange National Park. Witnesses reported seeing capture and spotting teams, government vehicles towing cages and armed men at key watering holes with radios to call in the capture teams.
The animals were being kept in quarantine in holding pens at Umtshibi camp in the park, he said.
Officials opposed to the captures had leaked details to conservationists, Mr Rodrigues added. They reported some areas of the 5,500sq mile park were being closed to tourists and photographic safari groups. Conservation groups were trying to find out when the airlift would begin, he said, and were lobbying for support from international animal welfare groups to stop it.
Zoo conditions in North Korea, which is isolated by most world nations, did not meet international standards, he said. Two rhinos given to Mr Kim by Mr Mugabe in the 1980s, died a few months after their relocation. Mr Rodrigues said: “This new exercise has to be stopped. People under orders to do it are too scared to speak out.”
North Korea has a long association with Mr Mugabe, and trained a Zimbabwe army brigade responsible for the massacre of at least 20,000 people in the 1980s. – (Guardian service)