Yes, The Death Of Harambe Was A Tragedy

You’d have to be living on another planet to have not heard the story of Harambe, the rare silverback gorilla that was killed last weekend at the Cincinnati Zoo after a four year old boy fell into his enclosure.

The internet exploded with anger against the mother, who momentarily lost track of her child, causing the incursion which ended in the beloved animal’s death.

Statements were given by zoo officials. Celebrities weighed in. The media ran headlines about the tragedy of it all.

At first I didn’t get it. The child had been saved and was relatively unharmed. I thought the use of the word “tragedy” to describe the situation was perhaps — pardon the pun — a tad overkill.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized a tragedy had occurred. And it’s not the one a lot of people are talking about.

While the Internet and media contented itself assigning blame and taking sides, not a lot of people seemed to want to answer the more difficult, underlying question: why are wild animals like Harambe kept in captivity in the first place?

Society has seen a major shift in how we look at animals bred in captivity for human entertainment.

Take, for example, SeaWorld, which famously announced in March this year that it would end its controversial Orca breeding program after the documentary Blackfish hurt its ticket sales. The documentary hit a nerve with the public, depicting how captivity can cause violence and shorter lifespans in highly intelligent animals.

And just this May, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus retired their performing Asian Elephants to a preservation in Florida amidst mounting criticism against how the animals were treated.

But sadly for Harambe and others of his endangered species, the answer is not that simple for Western Lowland Gorillas. And that’s where the real tragedy starts.

There are fewer than 175,000 of these gorillas living in the wild, beset by habitat loss, hunting — even the Ebola Virus, which scientists believe may have killed up to a third of the population.

Harambe was part of a Species Survival Plan, an animal bred in captivity in the hopes that one day its numbers would be large enough for re-entry into the wild. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums has 113 such SSPs involving 181 species.

The programs boast varying degrees of success in bringing back species on the brink of extinction. Seen in that broader light, the death of Harambe, a seventeen year old male, represents a huge loss in those conservation efforts.

His death demonstrates that whether in the wild or in captivity, these animals are not safe. His enclosure was his home. And in the same way he was at risk from humans in the wild, even in the habitat we created for him, he was the expendable. His habitat was invaded, and yet he paid the price.

The incident represents a broader tragedy of treating exotic and wild animals like entertainment for our viewing consumption when they are anything but — they are living, breathing, wild beings.

If Harambe was as strong and dangerous as the zoo director said he was — 450 pounds, “six times stronger than a man,” and capable of crushing a coconut with one hand — perhaps he had no business being in a zoo.

And that’s the hypocrisy: we justify the safety and merits of keeping animals in zoos, but reflexively kill these animals when they react as they can naturally be expected to react — as wild animals.

In 2007, for instance, a 320 pound Siberian tiger named Tatiana climbed out of her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo after allegedly being provoked, fatally mauling a man and injuring his two friends. Police later shot the tiger, and everyone agreed it was a tragic incident that zoos needed to learn from.

But we didn’t learn.

Either animals are dangerous, and belong in the wild, or they’re not.

Either Harambe and Tatiana were dangerous, and should not have been held in captivity, or they were not.

We can’t continue to have it both ways. We can’t say certain animals are safe enough to justify being in captivity, but dangerous enough to justify being shot.

Unfortunately, there is no good outcome when situations like these arise. No one believes the death of the child would have been preferable to the death of Harambe.

However, we can all take away from this the renewed drive to push for all endangered species to have habitats they can be safe in — whether in captivity or out.

We can’t just say we are going to learn from this.

We actually need to this time.