Whistleblower Tips Off Group About Heartless Plan

Gulf Breeze, Fla. – After being contacted by a concerned whistleblower, PETA fired off a letter today to the executive director of The ZOO of Northwest Florida imploring her to cancel plans to remove a 3-year-old orangutan named Indah from her mother Sara, allegedly so that the youngster can be sold to a facility in Connecticut. Orangutans and their offspring share intensely close bonds and will typically stay together for eight years.

“Forcibly removing Indah from Sara will cause immeasurable grief and leave both animals emotionally scarred,” says PETA captive exotic animal specialist Lisa Wathne. “No animal-care professional would condone such a reprehensible act.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org

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PETA’s letter to the zoo follows.

December 16, 2008

Danyelle Lantz, Executive Director
The ZOO–Northwest Florida

URGENT

Dear Ms. Lantz,

PETA is an international nonprofit organization, with more than 2 million members and supporters dedicated to the protection of animals. It has come to our attention that The ZOO intends to remove 3-year-old baby orangutan Indah from the nurturing care of her mother, Sara, in order to sell the baby to a private enterprise in Connecticut. The ZOO must immediately cancel this heartless and immensely cruel plan. Separating this baby from her mother will inflict a great deal of trauma on both Indah and Sara and surely will leave the 3-year-old with lifelong emotional scars.

As executive director of a zoo, the well-being of individual animals must be your top priority. Young orangutans stay with their mothers longer than any other great apes do. Infants nurse for four to five years, stay in their mothers’ nests for approximately seven to eight years, and remain with their mothers until the next baby is born. Orangutans usually do not leave their mothers until they are 8 to 10 years old; 3 years of age is outrageously young for a baby orangutan to be separated from his or her mother.

As with all great apes, orangutans are exemplary mothers surely, you have witnessed this in your observations of Sara and Indah and they do not willingly give up their babies. There is no doubt that forcibly tearing Indah away from Sara will cause immeasurable grief and subsequent depression in both animals and will deprive Indah of the maternal care needed for normal physical and mental development.

May we please tell our members that this ill-conceived plan has been scrapped and that Indah will remain with her mother until she reaches an age when the two would naturally part?

Sincerely,

Lisa Wathne
Captive Exotic Animal Specialist

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