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http://www.ethics.org.au/on-ethics/blog/may-2016/why-it-was-wrong-to-kill-harambe

harambe wasnt gonna harm child

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The real tragedy about the shooting of Harambe the gorilla - it was handled correctly

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The real tragedy about the shooting of Harambe the gorilla - it was handled correctly

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http://www.sciencealert.com/the-real-tragedy-about-the-shooting-of-harambe-the-gorilla
added by Linzi

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/05/30/watch_footage_some_say_shows_why_harambe_the_gorilla_shouldn_t_have_been.html

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the cincinatt did

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Harambe had no intentions of harming the child

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Harambe had no intentions of harming the child

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http://www.ethics.org.au/on-ethics/blog/may-2016/why-it-was-wrong-to-kill-harambe

added by leo

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http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/05/cincinnati-zoo-crew-made-right-choice-in-shooting-harambe/
added by: Peyton Kimble

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3655908/Jane-Goodall-says-Cincinnati-Zoo-RIGHT-shoot-Harambe-tranquilizer-dart-not-knocked-quickly-enough.html
added by: Peyton Kimble

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added by Caroline

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The tragic events at Cincinnati zoo last Saturday triggered an outpouring of emotion all over the world. Shock at the killing of a splendid young silverback, Harambe, mixed with relief that the four-year-old boy came through it relatively unscathed (though doubtless traumatised). What lessons can we learn from such a sad turn of events?

Harambe is a KiSwahili word meaning "pull together" - a good name for a gorilla because gorillas live in stable family groups and they do look out for one another. Over the past 40 years I have had the good fortune to spend hundreds of hours in the company of gorillas in their natural habitat. Most of them were habituated - that is, used to, human observers with an understanding of gorilla etiquette - but misunderstandings sometimes occur. I have been charged by a nervous female who thought I was too close to a member of her group, a blackback (adolescent) male who I was filming feeding; I have been walloped and bowled over by boisterous blackbacks, treating me just like one of the family, and on occasion, been on the receiving end of defensive silverbacks giving their awe-inspiring screaming charge. But I've never been hurt by a gorilla.

These were free-living gorillas, though; if they don't like your company they can leave. A captive gorilla doesn't have that option. Harambe was born in captivity and raised by caring humans, but always with them in control - so it is unsurprising he didn't know what to do when a small boy dropped into his enclosure. And given that the enclosure had crowds of agitated humans above him shouting and screaming, it is not surprising the gorilla was stressed. When stressed, silverbacks strut and display their strength - often by dragging vegetation, group members or other objects (including humans) - but this is not a forest with soft leaf-litter but a zoo enclosure of concrete and rock, so such behaviour carries more risk to the unfortunate person being dragged. In such circumstances, was Harambe's death unavoidable?

Clearly if a silverback wanted to kill a child, he could do so in an instant. But he didn't

My immediate response to the news was a deep sense of regret and sadness. Watching the shaky phone video, it is clear that the child was understandably frightened and the gorilla understandably stressed, but in the video shown on the news websites, Harambe did not attack the child. He pulled the child through the water of the moat, at one point held his hand - apparently gently, stood him up and examined his clothing. The video is two minutes and 34 seconds long, however, and we are told the incident lasted some 10 minutes. Clearly if a silverback wanted to kill a child, he could do so in an instant. But he didn't. It would seem that the danger was more to do with whether the boy might bang his head on a rock while being dragged.

Without knowing what happened in the seconds leading up to the lethal shot, we are not in a position to judge the outcome. I can imagine the panic of the child's mother and the fear of the zoo staff. For a man with a gun thinking a child is in danger, it is a tough decision and the zoo is standing firmly behind their use of lethal force.

But there were other possible outcomes. In two other incidents where children have fallen into zoo gorilla enclosures ( Jersey in 1986 and Chicago in 1996) neither the gorillas nor the children died. It is cogent to examine the specifics of each case before drawing conclusions about this one.

What else might have been tried? I agree with the zoo director who felt a tranquilliser dart gun, which delivers a painful jab in the behind, could have startled Harambe and in the time it would take to have an effect, might have put the child at greater risk. Gorillas have a reasoning mind, however, and if someone known and trusted by Harambe had tried to calm him, perhaps offering something that would immediately attract his attention such as a tray of his favourite fruits, a negotiated settlement might have been possible (all the while with the marksman in position to shoot if necessary). Perhaps this was tried, but there has been no mention of it.

If a softly-softly approach failed, a display of force could be the next option. When the Gorilla Doctors need to anaesthetise a member of a wild gorilla group in Rwanda, Uganda or DRC, a line of courageous park staff stand between the silverback and the patient, giving the vets time to operate to remove a snare or treat a wound. Perhaps it would even be useful for zoo staff to be trained in the kind of nonlethal equipment used by police, prison officers and the military to restrain, stun or disorientate an aggressor without killing them? The point I am making is there are several possible steps between the fear and panic (both human and gorilla) shown in the video clips of the start of this event and the use of lethal force that ended it.

Aside from the wider ethical issues of keeping apes (or indeed any self-aware, nonhuman beings such as elephants and dolphins) in captivity, this tragic incident raises two key questions. How is it possible - yet again - for a child to gain such easy access to any zoo enclosure? Especially when zoos are primarily a family attraction. Even if no gorillas were involved, surely public safety standards require that a child cannot get to a 15ft drop so easily. And second, will zoo professionals amend their emergency protocols to try non-lethal methods first, with a marksman ready to shoot but only in the event that lethal force is necessary? Then such tragic events might be avoided in the future.

* To support one of the charities helping protect gorillas in Africa visit www.4apes.com and click on gorilla. To learn more about gorillas in their natural habitat by visiting them virtually, go to www.vecotourism.org or download the new UN-GRASP ApeAppVR for those with virtual reality headsets.
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I've spent a lifetime with gorillas. Shooting them should be a last resort | Ian Redmond

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The tragic events at Cincinnati zoo last Saturday triggered an outpouring of emotion all over the world. Shock at the killing of a splendid young silverback, Harambe, mixed with relief that the four-year-old boy came through it relatively unscathed (though doubtless traumatised). What lessons can we learn from such a sad turn of events?

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added by Aaron Wilson

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http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sort=DA-SORT&docType=Article&tabID=T003&prodId=GPS&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchType=BasicSearchForm&contentSegment=&currentPosition=1&searchResultsType=SingleTab&inPS=true&userGroupName=j003902001&docId=GALE%7CA460507910&contentSet=GALE%7CA460507910
I, Aaron Wilson, did this.

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did cincinnati zoo really have to kill a rare gorilla? - cnn

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'We'd make the same decision,' zoo director says of gorilla shooting

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The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden stands by its decision to fatally shoot a gorilla to save a child. Not everyone agrees with it.

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Did Cincinnati Zoo really have to kill a rare gorilla?

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Did Cincinnati Zoo really have to kill a rare gorilla?

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added by Caroline

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did cincinnati zoo really have to kill a rare gorilla? - cnn

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'We'd make the same decision,' zoo director says of gorilla shooting

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The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden stands by its decision to fatally shoot a gorilla to save a child. Not everyone agrees with it.

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The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla shot at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden after a 3-year-old crawled through a barrier and fell into his enclosure, was a deeply traumatizing event - for the child, for the surviving gorillas, for the witnesses, for the animal care staff and for those of us sensitive to the plight of captive animals. In the wake of such a tragedy, it seems someone must be blamed, but the fingers are being pointed in the wrong direction. The real culprits are zoos.

Many in the animal protection community suggest that Harambe wasn't a threat to the boy. Gorillas tend not to be aggressive, and if Harambe wanted to hurt the child, the 450-pound gorilla could have done so immediately, not after interacting with this curious creature for 10 minutes. But these people weren't on the scene.

Did members of the gorilla care staff do enough to try to separate Harambe from the child? If they could lure the female gorillas away, why not Harambe? Some activists are calling the killing of Harambe an act of cowardice by incompetent zoo employees. But members of the zoo care staff, and those who raised Harambe from infancy at another zoo, are devastated by what happened. Some staff may have argued against the hasty decision. We don't yet know.

Others are arguing that the boy's mother is to blame. How could she let her child fall into a wild-animal enclosure? Why didn't she have control over her son? How long did she let her child wander unsupervised such that he had time to get through the barriers? In a post on social media, a woman who identified herself as the child's mother didn't express remorse for the death of Harambe, just praise to God and thanks to zoo authorities for saving her son. Some people are suggesting that she be deemed legally negligent and charged with causing the death of an endangered animal. But she is just one among millions of mothers who bring their children to zoos. This was a terrible accident, but she is not alone in teaching children to view wild animals as amusement.

For me, the real question is not whom to blame, but why anyone was in a situation in which they had to make a choice between the life of a human child and the life of an endangered teenage gorilla in the first place. Keeping wild animals in captivity is fraught with problems. This tragic choice arose only because we keep animals in zoos.

Though killing is less common at U.S. zoos compared with the regular practice of "culling" at European ones, zoos are nonetheless places that cause death. Harambe's life was cut short intentionally and directly, but for many zoo animals, simply being in captivity shortens their lives. We know this is true for whales at SeaWorld. Elephants, too, die prematurely in zoos. So why have zoos?

One of the reasons often given is that zoos protect and conserve endangered wild animals. A few zoos do fund conservation efforts - the Cincinnati Zoo is one of them. These efforts are laudable, and I would hope that in light of this tragedy the Cincinnati Zoo will spend more to help protect lowland gorillas. Their natural habitat, as is true for so many wild animals, is under threat.

But captive animals, especially large mammals born in captivity, like Harambe, cannot be "returned to the wild." These sensitive, smart, long-lived gorillas are destined to remain confined, never to experience the freedom of the wild. They are, at best, symbols meant to represent their wild counterparts. But these symbols are distortions, created in an effort to amuse zoo-goers. Zoos warp our understanding of these wonderful beings and perpetuate the notion that they are here for our purposes.

If we really need someone to blame, maybe we should look at our society, which supports these types of institutions of captivity. If zoos were more like sanctuaries, places where captive animals can live out their lives free from screaming crowds and dangers not of their own making, no one would have had to decide to kill Harambe. Sanctuaries are places where the well-being of animals is of primary concern and animals are treated with respect. Three-year-olds and their families could see gorillas in Imax theaters, where their curiosity could be safely satisfied and gorillas could live with dignity, in peace.
Washington Post Lori Gruen is a philosophy professor and the coordinator of animal studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and was editor of the anthology "The Ethics of Captivity."

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The Cincinnati Zoo's problem wasn't that it killed its gorilla. It's that it's a zoo.

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The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla shot at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden after a 3-year-old crawled through a barrier and fell into his enclosure, was a deeply traumatizing event - for the child, for the surviving gorillas, for the witnesses, for the animal care staff and for those of us sensitive to the plight of captive animals.

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http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-singer-dawn-harambe-death-zoo-20160605-snap-story.html
added by Linzi

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/30/us/gorilla-shot-harambe/
added by: Peyton Kimble

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zoos are at fault for the treatment of animals
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-gorilla-killed-harambe-cincinnati-zoo-20160601-story.html

Added by Leo