Bronx Zoo starts laying off animals
Posted
Apr 24 2009, 11:34 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
These are prickly times for porcupines. And foxes. And deer.
They are being laid off from the Bronx Zoo, which faces a $15 million budget shortfall and must close four exhibits. And so bats, lemurs, antelope and hundreds of other animals will be shipped off to zoos around the country, the New York Post reports.
Some of them are hoping for a bailout. Or, in the deer's case, a bale-out. (Hey, is this thing on?)
The loss of these animals will most likely be permanent for the zoo, the largest urban zoo in the country. Severe city budget cuts have slashed the city's contribution to the zoo by $1.7 million, the Post reports. Another $13.3 million is gone after donations and other government funding dried up.
Corporate gifts are down, and attendance levels are dropping from previous years. And that hurts when you have so many mouths to feed.
Maybe the zoo should consider using bionic animals instead. The Germans have engineered robotic penguins that are pretty darn cute. (Click here for the video). And they don't eat.
It's unclear whether the Bronx Zoo can find homes for its animals. Surely other zoos in the country must be suffering similar crises.
Perhaps some quick rearranging of federal stimulus money could help save the zoo. USA Today reports that $300 million in stimulus money is going to 61 public housing authorities that have repeatedly mishandled federal money in the past. How about handing some of that over to help a lemur out?
Image credit: J. Glover, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license
