Illinois resident Annie Gutierrez created a petition entitled ‘Harambe’s Law’ just two days after the 17-year-old gorilla’s death. By now, you’ve probably heard that a boy fell into the animal’s enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and was dragged by Harambe, for what most likely seemed like an eternity, before zookeepers shot and killed the endangered silverback. The boy is fine, but people are either outraged at the mother for not keeping an eye on her child or the zoo for killing an important animal. Despite this, the mother was not charged with anything.
Gutierrez is calling for consequences to be set in place “when an endangered animal is harmed or killed due to the negligence of visitors.” In just eight days, the petition has gained over 210,000 supports and that number has been growing every hour, while another petition, “Justice for Harambe,” has passed the halfway mark to one million signatures. Ohio’s State Senator Cecil Thomas is one politician who is reviewing what state laws already cover and what needs to be added. Other senators disagree for justifiable reasons: Bill Seitz believes prisons are already filled to the brim and this will only add to the problem.
Well, according to the Bureau of Prisons statistics, 46.3 percent of inmates were in for various drug charges and the third highest percentage of prisoners were immigrants at 9.2 percent, both of which have their own controversies and ultimately have a lot of people that aren’t supportive of either being worth prison time. So, would being locked up for somehow being responsible for an animal’s untimely death cause the same level of outrage?
Western lowland gorillas barely have a population of 100,000 outside of captivity. Harambe was going to lead his own troop of female gorillas in order to breed and help continue to recover and conserve the species, and zookeepers are unsure whether they will use his stored sperm to assist in doing so. Following his death, the Cincinnati Zoo is increasing its efforts to conserve gorillas. Yet that is not the only reaction they should be having.
Those are the statistics, the facts that everyone appears to be focusing on. Now, a more emotional, moral standpoint comes in to play. The man who named Harambe did so because the word means “to work together in unity” in Swahili. He and his family visited the gorilla at the Gladys Porter Zoo and considered him to be part of the family. It is unknown whether he would support this law, but, as he told CNN, he certainly believes that we as humans have lost our connection with nature as well as ourselves. Thousands are upset that an rather important animal life has been lost.
The boy making his way into the enclosure was an accident; a tranquilizer gun would have taken several minutes to take affect and by then he could have been seriously injured or killed; animals have instincts and Harambe couldn’t have been expected to act differently. Silverback gorillas have been known to both intensely protect and kill offspring, acting aggressively toward a human child should not have come as a surprise.
In 1986, a boy fell into a gorilla enclosure. A male silverback gorilla sat by the unconscious child and guarded him from other gorillas. Ten years later, the same thing occurred: a female gorilla carried a child to the door of her enclosure to wait for zookeepers to get him. In other incidents, individuals have purposely made their way into animal exhibits in order to play with the animals or retrieve something they dropped and have even done so as suicide attempts, those of which have resulted in the deaths of the animals—not the humans.
State legislators should not be focusing on what to do with careless visitors who sometimes appear to just be plain stupid in their behavior. Zoos either need to create enclosures where it is basically impossible for outsiders to accidentally and purposefully go in, or stop allowing zoos to be public altogether. No one and no animal can get hurt if greater measures are taken and there certainly won’t be as many complaints as compared to if laws were changed altogether.
Humans are advanced and unique, but they aren’t any more significant than other living creatures and, consequently, don’t deserve a large amount of privilege compared to them. Zoos assist in vital research and funding for the conservation of animals. This being said, it seems ridiculous that they feel they can afford to continue to risk the safety of any species to please their visitors.
Yes, Ohio can establish new laws and other states can follow; however, it’s a guarantee that doing so will create an increasing fuss that could eventually boil over. Instead, zoos must renovate in order to cease possible danger to animals and humans alike.
