Hello Everyone, Below you will find a Facebook post that was sent to our page by Sharon Perry. We have decided to re post the message as although we felt Sharon could of contacted us first as she knows nothing about us but we are happy to answer the points she made. Have a read of Sharon’s post and our reply below and feel free to comment. We would say though that going public with our animals and the work we do with them was always going to be difficult, but we will not be put off by messages like this. Posted by Sharon Perry:- Shocking that you will be using wild animals to attract trade. I’m not sure why you have such an extensive collection of exotics, I can only hope maybe they have been rescued, but even if they have its cruel to put them on public display to perform for customers. I have worked for several years with ex-pet primates. They should not be kept as pets, and by casually displaying them in such a way you are encouraging the trade. Our reply :- Hello Sharon, I’ve taken over a week to think about your post before constructing my reply and to be honest I’m quite annoyed about the way you went about making your opinion without any information, research or contact with us. Your first word was shocking, which is how I would describe your attack and attitude towards us. First of all I would like to address your point of using animals to attract customers. The whole purpose of this project is to be able to fund more work with the animals. All profit we take goes back into either the work we do with our animals or supporting local animal charities. We have no paid staff working with the animals, this is all done on a volunteer basis so no one is paid a wage. Many of our animals have either been rescued or been given to us when people can no longer keep them. To be able to continue this work and give these animals a good future costs money which the profit from the pub helps support. We also offer free entry to see the animals, no money is made from this so without the pub we would not be able to help many of these animals and they would either be abandoned or re enter the pet trade which we are all against. So in fact we are using the pub to support animals as opposed to using the animals to support the pub. Your second point is regarding the performing and public display of wild animals. To be clear none of our animals have come from the wild. They have all been captive bred and would not survive in the wild. We have spent years designing and redesigning our enclosures and once they are all built we hope to have some of the best enclosures with lots of thought gone in to reinforcing their natural behaviour. At no time will our animals be expected to perform, they will live in as natural a way as possible and the public will be allowed to view them living their lives which is no way a performance. We also keep a lot of nocturnal animals which wont even be seen during daylight but these still need to be fed watered and paid for. With regards to encouraging the pet trade, I find this point ridiculous. This is one thing that we would like to help control and by opening to the public we hope that talking to people and allowing them to see the work that goes in to for example a primate, we would be able to demonstrate to them that they are hard work, messy, time consuming and expensive and do not make good pets. I am very much against people keeping any animals without first carrying out some research and fact finding whether it be a dog, cat, rabbit, parrot or primate. I would rather no primates were kept as pets but the fact is they are so instead of attacking people as you have I prefer the approach of welcoming all and educating people. Personally I have spent years working with animals and in no way have I ever put myself up to be an expert. I do believe that looking after these animals and allowing the public to see the hard work involved (which is something you seldom see at zoo’s) is important and will help many animals and people. For many years the animals I look after have come first, even to my own detriment before my own family and life. The animals at the pub will allow people a chance to be able to enjoy what we have at no cost to them and hopefully put them off keeping animals themselves. What zoo offers this? I’m sure there are many people like me that have worked on their own privately that are scared to come out in the public eye because of exactly what you have done. I hope by reading this you will see there are always two ways to look at something and maybe not jump to conclusions next time. I look forward to your reply.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 12:00:54 +0000
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