The zoo of death

The head of the government does not befriend his project of Ecoparque . He first turned against conservationists with the idea of ​​a place without animals. Then the protectors of the animals felt betrayed when the law that came out allowed to continue to conserve the species. To these two groups who are constantly questioning about how ex Zoological is treated, the denunciation of a new opposition area was added, when Horacio Rodríguez Larreta was able to approve the partial privatization of the land. Now he has added criminal charges for the successive death of a rhinoceros and a female giraffe. The project of what was once considered an Ecopark has already entered into history: it will now be necessary to see to what extent progress can be made in an area of ​​the city where the square meter is quoted at a distance. high price.

The former zoo is back in the news, I think it's important to give the issue a historical perspective. In a special report by Nueva Ciudad we have long told the longest history of the Buenos Aires Zoo, from its foundation to the disasters that the Menem people did. Today I am going to concentrate on the Macrista decade:

First step: keep it as a private affair . During his eight years as head of government, Mauricio Macri made no effort to recover the Zoo, which was in the hands of an individual, despite the accumulation of complaints . In 2011, the Menem concession expired. What did Macri do? He proposed to renew it for about twenty years . For this, he ignored a report from the Buenos Aires Auditorium, which indicated that between 1990 and 2008, 55% of the birds and 23% of the mammals had been lost. More than a hundred species were lost by the private concessionaire . Nothing For Macri, it was better to continue on this path. The only thing that held him back is that he did not get the votes in the Legislature. His Republican decision was therefore to escape the Legislature and make a shorter concession without legislative control. The result? The same dealer followed and they died: a polar bear, a giraffe, sea lions. There was no official reaction on the part of Macri, who put the same face that he puts now when he says that the barbarities of "Abel Albino" do not seem technically correct. "

Second stage: Larreta, the ecological. The new head of government seduced the protest areas with the proposal to dismantle the zoo, send the animals to sanctuaries and leave the place as an awareness space. You searched for a trading name: Ecoparque. This generated a cataract of criticism from conservationist areas, who questioned the viability of many animal transfers born in captivity or requiring special attention.

Third step: Larreta, the curator. In a twist never admitted by the Buenos Aires government, the law that came out looks much more like a cash conservation project than the original idea of ​​the Ecopark. . The animalists kept saying "Ecofraude" . And lawyer Andrés Gil Dominguez, who has filed an injunction for Sandra Sandra, quips about "Econegocio" or "Ecotorres" because he suspects that everything will end with a real estate deal. At this point, there were new gaps: leaving the Zoo open, closing it in a hurry to begin infrastructure work (which, in truth, are needed for the years of 39, abandonment of private entrepreneurs). Fourth step: Larreta, the privatizer. The marketing of Ecoparque ceased the day that Larreta sent the Legislature a plan for partial privatization of the land. They are more than 33 thousand square meters that will return to private hands. They will be franchised for 20 years (any resemblance to the first step is not a coincidence). He has already managed to approve it in first reading with the votes of Martin Lousteau's legislators.

In this was the macrismo, when the animals began to die again, this time not by the work of a private to whom to blame and take the concession. First the rhinoceros Ruth, after a flood, suffered an infection that allowed her to spread and eventually killed her. Then the giraffe Jackie had a "general decompensation". This led to the former director of the Zoo Claudio Bertonatti – who slammed the door in the middle of PRO's direction because, as he said, they did not allow him sufficient funds – he filed a complaint on the environment (UFEMA) . Bertonatti denounced the bad general conditions – in fact a video was viralized with an invasion of badroaches and rats – and pointed out that they were referring specialists who took care of these animals. He asked that the judiciary intervene in the Ecoparque, which could lead to a new stage. As an antecedent, the cause of the Orangutan Sandra has already forced the government of Buenos Aires to change many of their living conditions.

Until now, from the city, they only managed to say that the giraffe had an ulcer. " In the Ecopark, animals that are housed in historic sites that were privatized a month ago by the Legislative Assembly of Buenos Aires are simply" dying " , suggested Enrique Viale There is no evidence, at the moment, of a connection of this type. What is clear is that although the conditions under which animals are cared for continue to add doubts, the company advance, no matter how many complaints accumulated