Zoo Urged Not to Monkey Around With ‘Family’

A dispute broke out at the San Francisco Zoo on Tuesday over whether moving Josephine the orangutan to the Philadelphia Zoo so she can mate with her own kind is good conservation or animal cruelty.

The San Francisco Zoo plans to send the large, rust-colored animal across the country soon to pair her with Bim, a 15-year-old orangutan of the Bornean subspecies, the same as Josephine, in the hope that they will have offspring and help preserve the subspecies.

But the move has kicked up a controversy among zoo patrons and Citizens for a Better Zoo who view it as a painful and needless separation of Josephine from her 22-year home, her longtime mate, Denny, and their offspring, Violet.

Seeks to Calm Storm

The two sides nearly had a face-off at the zoo, where the director sought to calm the storm at a news conference, while zoo patrons and supporters clustered around the orangutan cage.

“Josephine came here when she was a tiny baby, and this is her home,” said Violet Soo-Hoo, a zoo patron and the namesake of Josephine’s baby. “To put her in a box and send her somewhere else is terribly cruel.”

Zoo Director Saul Kitchener said Josephine, who is “in her 20s” is being moved for scientific reasons, to breed with a Bornean orangutan, so their offspring will not be a hybrid, like Violet, who looks just like her parents but will not be allowed to reproduce because of her mixed genes.

Orangutans can breed into their 40s and have been recorded as living to be as old as 57.

Discounts Trauma

Kitchener scoffed at questions about the traumatic effect on Josephine of being separated from her home and family, explaining that she and Denny are kept apart at night and have not been allowed to mate since they produced Violet, who at age 10 is mature.

“I don’t see where Josephine is going to be unhappy,” he said. “Going to a zoo where there is a younger male is great for her.” She will be replaced in Denny’s life by a Sumatran female from another zoo.

Josephine is being moved in accordance with the national Species Survival Plan, which is aimed at preserving endangered species, Kitchener said.