Bali Zoo: Make the animal enclosures humane!

My name is Maddison Brett. I am 15 years old; I’ve lived in Bali for 5 years now. I participate in Green Super Camp twice a year and for the adventure day; we have to go to Bali Zoo.

I was shocked when we first arrived at Bali Zoo, we got to do activities that other tourists couldn’t, for example, doing a treasure hunt around the back of the zoo where tourists are not permitted. During the treasure hunt, I saw cages on the muddy floor with dirty blankets over the top of them, I wondered what was in them and pulled the blanket off, I saw 5 small dirty tiger cubs, in less than a meter squared cage, crying and yelping. They looked so sad and I realized I couldn’t do anything about it.

Some of the staff live behind the zoo and animals are caged up outside of their rooms. That’s not the only thing, when I did the tour around the Zoo; I saw the pain in all of the animal’s eyes. Their enclosures were small and dirty; some animals did not have any company, or anything to entertain themselves with, they were obviously bored.

There was also one more that brought tears to my eyes, the orangutan, Jacky. Jacky is a large male Sumatran orangutan that lives in a concrete enclosure by himself. Jacky spends his days sitting in the corner of his enclosure, staring at the wall. Loud tourists usually come past and yell at him to make him do something, Jacky starts to feel threatened and throws anything he can find at them. There are warning signs in front of his enclosure about this.

A lady from Australia saw this and felt the same way I did, she decided to start up a project to help Jacky, and his enclosure renovations started in September and are almost finished. He now has obstacles to climb and swing on, he seems much happier.

There are animals at the zoo that need our help. We all hate seeing animals in pain. Please put a stop to this, if Bali Zoo can’t make natural and decent enclosures, they shouldn’t have a license to keep wild animals like that.