Age Debate: Should zoo persist with penguins

We are saddened by the penguin Dory’s death. However, we do not believe sending the penguins back or rehabilitating them elsewhere is the solution to the problem. We want to continue keeping them in the Byculla zoo, under utmost care. Protecting the penguins’ health, state of mind, and their lives is our first priority. I urge all activists opposing the BMC to join hands with the administration, provide their expertise, and help us take better care of the penguins. Maybe, they can even suggest names of experts abroad who would be willing to come and help us take care of the birds.

If Mumbai does not have the experts or experience to take care of exotic species, we need to increase the budget sanctioned to take care of the remaining seven penguins, so we can fly in experts from abroad.

Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray has been facing flak for the death of the penguin, but I think that is unfair. The penguins were not kept at his house. Nobody congratulated him when we successfully transported the penguins from South Korea.

The people who were entrusted with the care of the penguins are partly to blame.

Not all people can afford to go abroad and see such species, so we thought why not upgrade the zoo.

Avkash Jadhav, nominated Shiv Sena corporator

$Experts must aid civic body

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Animals cannot be treated as commodities. Besides, zoos are no place for animals, and the Byculla Zoo is already in bad shape.

Sending the birds back is out of the question. We need to rehabilitate them to a place where there are experts to take care of them. Putting them up for display to people is not an option, because in the quarantined environment itself, one penguin has died.

Displaying them will be traumatic for them; that too in Mumbai's temperatures of 40 degrees and above.

I had seen this coming. On the one hand, we have political whims and fancies and on the other hand there is incompetence and inexperience. That she died of a liver and intestinal infection is proof the bird has not been able to adjust to the food here — which means all the other birds are at risk and on the brink of death. We don’t have qualified vets to treat penguins, so any attempt to treat them are purely trial and error — and sadly, these errors are costing precious lives!

As part of the BMC’s agreement with the third-party caretakers, who have been trained by the Korean party to take care of penguins, should a penguin die while it is in the care of the private party, it can be replaced. I am opposing this, because then the BMC will keep killing penguins, and keep bringing in new ones.

Anand Siva, animal activist

$Penguin should not be replaced

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