The Death of Harambe

Zell, the zoo has already heightened the fence well beyond the standard.

EDIT: While I'm not placing blame, the mother should definitely have kept an iron grip on her son as soon as she told him no when he said that he wanted to go into the water inside the enclosure.

Last edited on 2016-06-02 at 17:27:43 by ｖｏｓ ♚

I just found out the gorillas b-day was the day before it happened...

My take on this, as someone who used to work in a zoo (I'm assuming the procedures for most modern zoos are largely the same):

When there's a serious situation in which the best judgement is that a person is likely to be killed or injured and there's no other way to quickly separate the animal from the people, the only viable option is to kill the animal. It's unfortunate, but you cannot take that sort of risk with human life. In this situation the gorilla, an extremely dangerous animal, was very agitated and was already harming the child (intentionally or otherwise is irrelevant). The zoo staff needed to act swiftly, and to allow the gorilla to continue to harm the child for the next 10 minutes while a tranquilliser took effect was unacceptable, so they had to euthanase it. A bullet sounds horrific, but a sufficiently trained shooter, as would be present in a dangerous animal response team, would at least be able to ensure a quick death.

What comes next will inevitably be investigations into both the actions of the child's guardians and those of the zoo. I would be unwilling to cast judgement on either until all the facts from such investigations have come to light. The very limited video footage available doesn't depict the whole incident, and witness testimony tells us there's certainly a lot more to it than just what we see in that. One investigation will look at whether the zoo had taken sufficient measures to keep people out of the enclosure, whether guidelines for fences, etc, were met (current reports say they were met or exceeded), whether these guidelines (which are set by a state or federal body independent of the zoo) are adequate, and whether anything could have been done differently to prevent this situation or handle it better.

And while I wouldn't want to pre-empt the results of such an investigation, I would like to note that even though a child got into the enclosure, it isn't guaranteed that the zoo's enclosures or procedures were inadequate. The zoo is required to take all reasonable measures to keep people out of the animal enclosures, especially those of dangerous animals, including meeting or exceeding guidelines determined by independent bodies and checked by independent safety inspectors. The key word here though is 'reasonable'. Even the most secure enclosures can still be broken into by a sufficiently determined person. I understand the child climbed over a 1 metre fence (roughly as tall as them), under some wire, then through the bushes bordering the moat, where they then fell 4 metres. That is a considerable effort by any measure. Maybe more could have been done by the zoo to prevent this, even if independent safety inspectors had already given them their approval, but it's pretty clear to me that the zoo was already doing a lot.