Quick! Shoot it, shoot to kill the damned thing!

[Workingman]

This appears to be the modus operandi when (dangerous) animals escape. The latest is a rare snow leopard that escape its pen in Dudley Zoo when it was closed. They are listed as vulnerable by WWF. This has also been the fate of lynx, red deer stags, wolves, wild boar and many, many others.

It dismays and disgusts me.

My take on this is that if a marksman/woman can get close enough to fire a lethal shot, and keep the public safe at the same time, then he or she could and should use a tranquilliser dart. There are plenty of scenes in wildlife documentaries where super large animals are brought to ground in a few tens of seconds. They do not get enough time to do any real damage as they are so groggy from the instant the dart hits.

This "shoot to kill" policy has to be looked at.

[TheOstrich]

I agree with you, it's tragic.

The only extenuating circumstances I can see in this case would be that it was pretty much at dusk, Dudley Zoo is effectively in the town centre, and as "the vet did not believe a tranquiliser dart was a safe option due to the amount of time the drug takes to work" [Zoo spokesperson / BBC News report] they just couldn't risk the leopard getting off the zoo premises and into the shopping precinct.

[Suff]

Better to OD it on a tranquilizer than give it a terminal shot. They could have hit it with several at once and, if that did not do it, the option was still there to shoot it.

When we take these animals into zoo's we do have a duty of care and simply shooting them because things have gone out of hand is not the best answer. I'd rather shoot the knife wielding lunatic who tried to smash his way into a car. More people murdered every year by humans, in the UK, than are killed by big cats, which escape their cages, in 100 years...

But hysteria and risk aversion will out.

[Workingman]

Better to OD it on a tranquilizer than give it a terminal shot. They could have hit it with several at once and, if that did not do it, the option was still there to shoot it.

Quite. Reports say that it was cornered by a "team" of keepers who could not entice it back to the pen, so the option of "one down, two to go" was there.

After posting I saw an interview with a former game hunter and he thought the dart was the best first option.

I can understand the zoo vet's response, because bottoms have to be covered, but I am concerned about whether it truly was the only option and/or last resort. Sad, very sad.

[cromwell]

Poor thing. It didn't ask to be in the zoo in the first place,, the lest they could do was to look after it. Leaving a gate open.. how daft is that?
I agree, they shuld have tried to tranquilise it first.

[Workingman]

I would have thought that keeper access gates to 'dangerous' animal enclosures should be of the double-lock type. We had them in the RAF to restrict access to some areas.

Simple mechanical levers meant that if one side was open the other remained closed. Under normal operation it was impossible for both sides to be open at the same time, even slightly. It was a right old faff to disable them for things like deliveries, and at those times we put on armed guards.