Crocodiles are paid for places outside the Moscow Ring Road – Picture of the day – Kommersant

The structures of the capital’s mayor’s office announced a competition for the maintenance of the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center. We are talking about a center in the village of Andreikovo near Moscow for 780 animals, transferred by the owners voluntarily or seized by the authorities, with enclosures for lions, tigers, birds of prey and large ungulates. For their maintenance, as well as catching foxes and other wild animals in the city, the mayor’s office is ready to pay 77 million rubles by the end of the year. Many citizens keep predatory animals in their apartments, despite a ban that has been in effect for several years, and wild animals are regularly seized at the capital’s airports, experts say.

The competition for “implementation of environmental protection measures in relation to wildlife objects” was announced by the State Budgetary Institution “State Environmental Center” (subordinate to the metropolitan department of environmental management). Under the terms, the contractor must keep up to 780 animals at the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center. The institution, according to the ToR, should be equipped with winter and summer rooms for 250 heat-loving and exotic animals, a terrarium for 50 reptiles, enclosures for ten large ungulates, 60 predators (including lions and tigers), 90 birds of prey and outdoor reservoirs for waterfowl .

The animals are expected to be kept from March until the end of 2023. Applications for the competition are accepted until February 2, the contract amount is 77.2 million rubles.

Since 2011, the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center has been operating in the village of Andreikovo near Moscow. The Metropolitan Department of Nature Management and Environmental Protection reported that most of the animals get there injured. At the same time, the tender documentation refers to the need to keep animals “living in the natural areas of Moscow and taken from their natural habitat.” But of the animals that are actually found in urban nature, only foxes appear in the description – their contractor should be caught and placed in the center when they find schools, hospitals, kindergartens and other social facilities on the territory. Wild animals “in distress” or dangerous predators should be caught right in the city, and fed in the center according to the standards of the Moscow Zoo “within the contract price … if departmental feeding standards are not provided.”

The center is also expected to house animals seized from apartments by law enforcement agencies or specialists from the Department of Natural Resources.

Note that the content of a number of species in housing is prohibited by government decree No. 795 back in June 2019. This list includes, for example, crocodiles, caiman turtles, several species of snakes, including cobras, scorpions, lions, bears, leopards, hippos, cheetahs, lynxes, wolves, foxes, a number of monkeys (including gibbons and hominids), ostriches, eagle owls and cranes. The Moscow Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection recalled that the keeping of animals from this list is prohibited by the federal law “On the responsible treatment of animals.”

The documentation stipulates that animals can be transferred to the Center for the Rehabilitation of Wild Animals by citizens and legal entities both voluntarily and by decision of the courts, as well as on the basis of calls to the City Hall’s help desk for veterinary care. The contractor is expected to catch wild animals “imported from other climatic zones and showing signs of animals without owners.” Separately, it is stipulated that the city authorities will not pay the contractor for the capture and maintenance of rats, mice, sparrows, pigeons, crows, gulls, swallows and swifts.

The head of the Alliance for Animal Defenders, Yuri Koretskikh, points out that it is not enough just to remove wild animals – it is important to attach them somewhere.

“Private centers do not always take, because they are overcrowded. Not every zoo will agree,” he argues. The problem with wild animals is still relevant, despite a number of bans, “until now, photographers offer pictures with wild animals, petting zoos without a license, traveling circuses with big tops that abandon animals, of course, this is more typical for the regions, and there are fewer problems in Moscow “, says the expert. Also, he recalls, many keep wild animals in apartments and private houses, despite the ban. Expert of the Moscow Society for the Protection of Nature Boris Samoilov recalls that wild animals are regularly confiscated at the capital’s airports when citizens try to illegally take them out.

Alexander Voronov, Anna Vasilyeva