The on-going tensions in Venezuela are wreak about a dark and unusual turn against the country ’s biodiversity and conservation movement .
AsReuters reportsfrom Maracaibo in Venezuela , authority are enquire the thievery of numerous animals from a zoo , believe they might have been steal for the purpose of run through amid the body politic ’s chronic food shortages .
The Zulia Metropolitan Zoological Park says that at least 10 species have been affect by the recent theft , including buffalo , the dotty boar - like collared peccaries , and two tapirs .
The South American tapirs are specially of concern in price of preservation . This species , Tapirus terrestris , is native to Venezuela and much of South American but is considered to be vulnerable to extinguishing and listed on theIUCN Red List . Due to a combination of habitat expiration , illegal search , and rivalry with livestock , the health of this species is on a downward slump .
The crisis in Venezuela has recently reached crunch pointedness , as President Nicolás Maduro cling onto office while mounting opponent grows . On top of the ongoing violence polish off the streets , many Venezuelans arefacing severe food shortages . One recent task take note a sudden climb of moderate or severe acute malnutrition among baby in the past few months .
In light of all this , the police have read they trust the animals were stolen for food . The zoo , however , refutes this .
Leonardo Nunez , the head of the menagerie , says that it ’s most probable bunch or drug dealers have stolen the cherished animals for the purposes of traffic them . “ They take everything here ! ” he toldreporters . “ The animals were n’t stolen to be wipe out . ”
The Venezuelan crisis has antecedently brought fuss to other menagerie in the country . At least 50 animals starved to death last class , include Vietnamese pigs , tapirs , lapin , and birds at a zoo in Caracas , the nation ’s upper-case letter . TheLA Timeseven reported last year that vultures could be see circling the enclosure of Ruperta , a 46 - year - quondam waste African elephant , as zoological garden stave struggle to receive the manpower and food to take tending of the animals .
It ’s fairly plebeian for captive animals to be swept up in all-embracing political problems . Just lately , nine sternly ominous animalsarrived at a rehabilitation center in Turkeyafter being empty and then excavated from a zoo near Aleppo , a focal point of the Syrian Civil War .
