Granby Zoo lion attack raises safety questions
Quick thinking — and proper safety training — by staff at Granby Zoo likely saved a young lion keeper from suffering even worse injuries if not death after a lion attacked her Monday morning.
“The employees knew exactly what to do,” said Rob Vernon, a spokesperson for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, to which the Granby Zoo belongs. “Members must conduct at least four safety drills every year . ... I believe that’s why this situation was resolved rather quickly.”
The incident happened around 9 a.m. when the woman, in her early 20s, was alone in the enclosure of one of the zoo’s two female lions.
The zoo’s general manager, Paul Gosselin, could not say what exactly she was doing at the time.
But Gosselin said a fellow zookeeper quickly turned a highpressure water hose and fire extinguisher on the animal, forcing it to back off.
The woman, who had worked at the zoo since 2011, suffered cuts and a cervical fracture, but is now in stable condition at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke. “The zoo community is in a state of shock because of what happened,” Gosselin said. “We’re following her state of health very closely.”
The lion was brought under control, and Gosselin said there is no danger posed to employees or zoo visitors. But the zoo’s lions will be isolated for the time being and kept out of public view.
“We’re an accredited zoo, and we have very precise procedures when we work with dangerous animals like felines,” Gosselin said, adding it was the first time a lion attacked someone working at the zoo.
Staff would be given psychological help in dealing with the incident, he said, while the province’s workplace safety board is also investigating.
Vernon, of the AZA based in Maryland, said the association would wait for Granby Zoo to finish its own analysis of what happened. Based on the zoo’s report, the AZA would then typically offer its own recommendations as to how to prevent a similar incident from reoccurring, Vernon said.
“This kind of incident is very rare — zoos and aquariums accredited by AZA are very safe facilities,” Vernon said. “But occasionally accidents like this happen.”
As news of the attack spread across North America, however, animal rights activists said it was another sign zoos should be closed for good.
Zoos are miserable for animals and unsafe for humans, argued Camille Labchuk, the executive director of Animal Justice Canada.
“For us, the end of zoos can’t come soon enough,” said Labchuk, whose organization was also addressing concerns Monday that a lion cub was being paraded around a Toronto night club. “Animals in captivity are denied everything that makes their lives meaningful — stimulation, getting their own food, appropriate social grouping.”
Contrary to the view of AZA, Labchuk said maulings by big cats in zoos and private collections are incredibly common.
She said there had been hundreds of incidents and at least two dozen deaths in North America alone since the 1990s.
“It’s hard to know what makes animals snap,” Labchuk said. “But we know animals confined in zoos suffer mental health issues from the conditions of their confinement.”
Monday’s mauling in Granby, like the killing of Harambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo who was shot dead after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure in May, are exposing the “dark side” of the zoo industry, Labchuk said.
Her group would like to see all zoo animals moved into sanctuaries if they can’t be released into the wild.
The Granby Zoo, founded in 1953 about 80 kilometres southeast of Montreal, currently houses three lions among a total of about 1,500 animals from three continents.