The Nuremberg Zoo has taken in a pair of harpies from Brazil. The zoo visitors do not get to see them, however. The birds of prey are housed as a breeding pair on the Zoo ‘s own Mittelbüg estate.
Both animals, a male and a female, come from the Roberto Ribas Lange Zoopark in Itaipu Binacional in Brazil. They hatched there in early 2018.
Before the two birds could travel to Germany, they had to go through a two-year international approval process.
The Nuremberg Zoo is important for breeding harpies worldwide (!!!).
Successful breeding with the harpy pair Esmeralda and Enrico began in the early 1980s.
The couple raised eleven chicks, four female and seven male; four more chicks died.
The offspring of this breeding pair from Nuremberg live today at Schmausenbuck. These are Evita, Jorge and Domingo.
Further offspring can be found in zoos like Berlin, but especially in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. Most recently, the zoo transferred the male harpy Vito to Parque Condor in Ecuador on August 11, 2020.
The animals are potentially threatened with extinction. Due to the increasing deforestation of the rainforest in South America, their population is decreasing rapidly.
The mighty birds of prey with a weight of four to nine kilograms and a wingspan of up to two meters depend on the tropical rainforest.
Harpies live on the tall jungle trees on which they build their nests to raise their young.
They also find their large prey such as monkeys and sloths there. Birds of prey experts from Nuremberg report that the birds often stay in their tree for days and only soar in the air when they are looking for food.
Research projects on behavior and reproduction
The Nuremberg Zoo staff also carry out various research projects with harpies. It is about behavioral experiments, studies on animal preferences and reproduction.
The specialist knowledge on birds of prey is not only used at the Schmausenbuck: conservation projects in the natural habitat of animals in Brazil also benefit, reports the zoo.
And I mean…On the website of the Nuremberg zoos we read: “he greatest threat to their continued existence is the destruction of their habitat by slash and burn and the deforestation of tropical rainforests”.
That’s true.
But so far, other than enslaving animals and raising them for money, the zoo director has done nothing against Bolsonaro’s environmental crime.
The indigenous peoples of the Amazon are also on the list for threatened peoples in the early warning level due to the paramilitary forces of Brazil.
Should we therefore tear them out of their homes, bring them here to zoos and let them breed?
By the way! There were human zoos too, until 1958!
With the same excuse “we want to” save “these cultures”, the whites have depicted and degraded the (black) people in zoos.
The Germans have a perverse understanding of species protection: removing people and other animals from their natural environment and bringing them to Germany to show them to the onlookers for money.
The Hagenbeck zoo (near Hamburg), from which the photo originates, still advertises with its role model function “as a pioneer of nature, environmental and species protection”.
Were the “exhibits” shown also threatened with extinction and did they have to be preserved “for the next generations”?
My best regards to all, Venus
