Paris zoo to reopen after truant baboons found
PARIS: Paris’s main zoo was set to reopen after the last of around 50 baboons who had escaped from their enclosure were found overnight, the zoo authorities said.
A spokeswoman for the National Museum of Natural History said two females and a baby were tracked down at around 4:15 am local time.
The Vincennes zoo was shut on Friday afternoon while dozens of police and zoo-keepers launched a monkey-hunt.
“The incident is over,” the zoo said in a statement.
It said it would reopen to visitors on Saturday day and was now trying to establish how the primates got loose in the first place.
The alarm was raised on Friday afternoon when a zoo employee bumped into a baboon in a corridor.
“The professionalism of the wildlife teams at the Paris zoo allowed for a happy ending ... we are analysing the precise circumstances of the incident,” the spokeswoman said.
The baboons remain in the area of the “grand rocher”, a landmark central mountain inaccessible to the public at the zoo in the lush Vincennes area of the French capital.
The breakout was first noticed by a zoo worker, who saw the primates gathering in a service corridor used by personnel late Friday morning.
Safety procedures were immediately triggered, the zoo said in a statement, with a total of 60 firefighters, 20 police and all of the zoo’s staff mobilised to capture the animals.
None of the baboons reached public areas and the evacuation was ordered as a precaution, the zoo said.