News & Updates

Over the past six months, there have been numerous incidents of animals escaping from zoos, including a red panda at Virginia Zoo; an orangutan at Chester Zoo; a gorilla at London Zoo; and a lion from Leipzig Zoo. Reports have emerged in the last couple of days of yet more animal escapes from zoos.

In 2007, with the support of the Born Free Foundation, the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust (LWT) launched their flagship project, the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre. Since then, and with our ongoing support, LWT has gone from strength to strength – today it stands as Malawi’s leading wildlife welfare and conservation charity.

Last week, while the global community was celebrating World Wildlife Day, the Born Free’s Border Point project team in Ethiopia was hard at work delivering training to over 1,300 police officers and trainees from the Amhara National Regional State (ANRS) counter terrorism unit. These officers play a crucial role in tackling illegal activities in the Amhara region, including illegal wildlife trade.

The depths to which some people are prepared to stoop to make money at the expense of wild animals reached a new low with the news that a white rhinoceros named Vince had been killed for his horn at a zoo near Paris. Reports suggest that one or more poachers broke into Thoiry Zoo to the west of Paris on the night of Monday 6th March, shot the rhino in the head several times, then cut off his horn with a chain saw.

The rare Ethiopian wolves are beginning to recover from three tough years in their stronghold in the Bale Mountains. This is Africa’s most threatened carnivore and the world’s rarest canid (dog family). Latest reports from the field have revealed that wolf packs in the Web Valley, Sanetti Plateau and Morebawa in the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia are thriving, with 28, 22 and 10 pups recorded respectively. The news is particularly welcomed because the last three years have been incredibly hard for these packs, following deadly outbreaks of rabies and canine distemper virus, as well as a serious drought.

Animals face many threats in the wild - some ‘natural’ and many that are ‘man-made’. But are animals kept in zoos really safe from danger? Over the years there have been numerous reports of animals in zoos around the world being injured or killed by visitors or intruders. Shockingly, this week alone has seen two such tragic incidents.

Meet Chipazuwa, an infant baboon who has just been rescued by Born Free’s long term partner the Zambia Primate Project (ZPP). After apparently escaping from a rope tethering her, she was found wandering alone, dehydrated and hungry by a compassionate farmer on the outskirts of Lusaka. ZPP swung into action and earlier this week she was flown to the Luangwa Valley where Anna Tolan from Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust and one of ZPPs ex-volunteers Ruth were waiting at the airstrip to meet her.

Born Free Founder and Trustee, Virginia McKenna OBE, congratulated newly qualified Metropolitan Police Dog handlers and their dogs, as they graduated from the Training Establishment in Keston, Kent. In a week where the future of the UK’s domestic ivory market was debated in Parliament, Virginia was keen to see first-hand how the Metropolitan Police is piloting new training techniques to crack down on the illegal wildlife trade.

Recent reports in the Daily Mail have yet again highlighted the risks of close interactions with captive elephants.The short video appears to show an unnamed female tourist, thrown into the air by a large captive elephant whilst taking part in a ‘bathing’ activity at an elephant facility in Thailand (believed to be the Patara Elephant Farm in Chiang Mai). Thankfully, serious injury, in this instance, was apparently avoided, but it could have been a lot worse. There have been many incidents of tourist injury and fatalities caused by captive elephants. Last year, a Scottish tourist was killed in Thailand when the elephant he was riding went berserk, trampling and goring him to death.

On the 2nd February, UK Government department Defra released its plans for new regulations relating to the licensing of animal establishments such as boarding kennels, horse-riding schools and pet shops.