Perancak Zoo, Bali's ugly little secret

Perancak Zoo, Bali's ugly little secret

Claire Harvey, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

There is an ugly little secret in a beautiful corner of Bali.

An adorable baby lion cub, emaciated and covered in sores, is
chained by the neck inside a tiny, stinking cage.

Not far away his parents, both proud African lions, lie on the
filthy concrete floor of another cage, chained by their necks to
posts.

The baby's father has an open wound on his head and growls
angrily at anyone who approaches his cage. The lioness is not
allowed to see her baby, who spends all his time alone in his
dark little cell.

This is Perancak Tourist Park, a private zoo which animal
rights activists say must be closed immediately.

A recent report by the World Society for the Protection of
Animals (WSPA) declared Perancak Tourist Park the worst of 10
Indonesian zoos visited by investigators over the past two years.

Perancak was "beyond rehabilitation and should be closed as
soon as possible", the WSPA report said.

Animals were kept in pitifully small cages, hygiene was
completely neglected and the animals showed symptoms of severe
mental disturbance, the investigators found.

The zoo managers even offered to sell one of the seven African
lions then in residence to investigators. "Several of the lions
were chained by the neck and others had open sores which had been
left untreated and were infested with maggots," the report said.

The zoo did not have a valid permit, but kept several types of
protected species, including eagles, hornbills and crocodiles.

When The Jakarta Post visited Perancak this month, things had
not improved. The eagles are no longer there, and five of the
seven lions have been transferred to Surabaya Zoo by the Forestry
Department.

A skinny, nervy pig-tailed macaque runs loose around the park.
Around its belly is a broken chain. In a corner of the zoo is the
answer to its escape -- the wire surrounding its empty cage is
torn open and the other end of the macaque's broken chain lies on
the floor.

Now it runs wild, climbing on the cages of other animals and
sidling up to visitors in the hope of being fed. It is in luck --
a man is holding a packet of crisps. Within seconds the macaque
snatches them and scampers into a tree with its prize.

The macaque seems at first to have little fear of humans --
but when one visitor bends to pick up a stick it squeals in
terror and sprints out of reach. Clearly this creature has
learned from experience to fear humans wielding sticks.

Activist Purwo Kuncoro, from the Bali division of Animal
Conservation for Life or Konservasi Satwa Bagi Kehidupan (KSBK),
is horrified by Perancak.

"The conditions here are terrible," Purwo says. "Many of these
animals cannot be saved. They have been so badly neglected that
many of them would have to be euthanized."

Purwo and fellow activist Wita Wahyudi have visited Perancak
dozens of times in their research for the report, which was a
joint project by WSPA and KSBK.

They have learned the owner of Perancak Tourist Park, about
two hours' drive east from Denpasar, is local businessman Murah
Hardono. But the family who ostensibly runs the zoo, selling
tickets and snacks and feeding the animals, say they have no
telephone number or address for him.

Officials of the Department of Forestry say they, too, have
been unable to trace Murah.

"The biggest problem in Indonesia is a lack of education about
animal cruelty," Wita says. "We have never educated our children
to care for animals. Even in kindergarten, children learn that if
they want to see a bird, they should put it in a tiny cage."

At Perancak, Purwo crouches before the dank cage of a wild
boar. The animal, its ribs clearly visible through its skin,
wallows in a thick gray puddle of mud which takes up half its
cage.

"We don't want all zoos to be closed down," Purwo says. "We
realize that zoos are necessary for education and for breeding
some species, but they do not have to be like this."

Next door to the wild boar's cage is a cassowary. This
enormous bird, perhaps 1.7 meters tall, is kept in a cage no
bigger than three meters square. It darts about nervously,
banging itself against the walls.

Four peacocks stand in a large, bare aviary and in a
malodorous pond behind a wooden fence, several large crocodiles
lurk in a dark-green pond. Near the crocodiles lie the remains of
their food. The bloody mess of flesh looks like it might have
been a dog.

Perhaps the saddest sight at Perancak is the cage which once
housed an animal that has disappeared to who knows where.

At one end of the row of cages a glass-walled room sits empty,
its roof missing. This room is tiny -- surely not more than four
meters square. What sort of animal could be kept in such a tiny
place? Surely something which did not need much room to move.

A tumbled-down sign reads: "Kangaroo".

For a kangaroo, the famous high-jumping, athletic Australian
marsupial, being trapped in a room like this must have been
torture.

Where has it gone? Nobody at Perancak can say -- but whatever
fate befell the Perancak kangaroo could not have been worse than
a life in this place.