Selling Zoo Animals

The implication in your editorial (“Making a Great Zoo Even Better,” Sept. 21) was wrong in its suggestion that animals sent from the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park to other zoos and to private facilities lack adequate safeguards for their proper protection. We have in place the most elaborate and most fail-safe animal placement system of any zoo in the world. We go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that each zoo or Wild Animal Park animal is placed in a good home.

In the past 12 months, we have placed some 1,200 animals at other zoos and with qualified privately owned facilities, and we did so with great consideration and care. Recently, we learned that a private facility where we had previously placed two deer had been converted to a hunting ranch without our knowledge. We immediately retrieved the animals unharmed.

The Zoological Society of San Diego policy remains hard and fast: We don’t send animals to hunting ranches, nor do we knowingly send animals to anyone who does business with hunting ranches. We oppose, unalterably, the captive hunting of zoo-bred animals.

We do all that is humanly possible to make sure our animals continue to receive the best care. The people who work here are people who care. We are devoted to doing the best for each animal as we work toward preserving the entire species.

ALBERT L. ANDERSON

President

Zoological Society of San Diego