As expected, Colombo Zoo was as horrendous as ever. I visited in April and no improvements had been made to improve the standards of the animal’s welfare at all. There is barely or no water in each of the pens/cages, most of the big cats are in either square boxed cages or concrete pens with no greenery or natural habitat at all.
It was very sad to see a lone orang-utan with hoards of people starring at him. He had learnt to beg and kept sticking his arm in the air to ask for food. People were throwing down cakes and biscuits, it was very degrading to see.
As last time, the elephants were the worst off. They were all chained by their front and back leg to the floor with no room to move and making it very difficult for them to sit or lay down. Two of them showed signs of mental behaviour and the younger two were constantly dancing to a gawping audience.
We did speak to the Director about the lack of water and how awful the conditions were for the animals. She said that they are building a new elephant enclosure so that the elephants will no longer have to be chained, although they have been saying this for years. We did some building work going on but we don’t know whether this was intended for the elephants or not. She said that when the elephants move she can then move the big cats in the concrete pens as those enclosures have been there since the zoo first opened years ago.
She rang her keeper about the lack of water in the lion’s enclosure. He said that the water pump had recently broken and that they would sort the problem straightway. The little water that was there looked absolutely filthy.
