Bison drown at Zoo America Hershey Pa in flooding video

[jn2375]

http://www.abc27.com/video?clipId=6232778&topVideoCatNo=193231&autoStart=true

this is hard to watch, people who saw this happen and called news station also say there are more animals that drowned but ZooAmerica is hiding it. ZooAmerica put up tarps over fences to keep people from seeing in. Makes you wonder what their hiding.

[joeybee12]

1. Jesus Christ...that's why these for profit zoos suck...knr

[SoCalDem]

2. Caged animals always suffer in disasters..

Locked up people often perish too.

:cry:

[Ian David]

3. If you can't get the animals OUT, I wonder if they could have thrown IN things for them to stand on.

[jn2375]

5. witnesses on tv last night said workers tried for 2 hours to get them out,

makes you wonder why they didn't call for outside help.

[hack89]

9. Perhaps there were people that needed rescuing?

and the workers rightfully did not want to divert outside help from more important rescues?

[Marrah_G]

13. Witnesses said the keepers were trying to save the animals.

There was just to much water moving and rising to quickly.

[hlthe2b]

4. Damn... they need to be held accountable for such unforgiveable negligence...

[Aerows]

6. So sad

The poor things. :( What an awful way for any creature to go - trapped and drowned :(.

[bklyncowgirl]

7. In hindsight, they should have moved these animals to higher ground.

I was there years ago and remember that there was a sort of pit near a stream where the bison were kept. They should have evacuated them. Of course herding a couple of 2000 pound bison through a theme park is not like putting your cat in a carrying case. It does sound like the zoo workers did the best they could with what they had but at the first notion that there would be flooding they should have brought in trailers and gotten those animals out.

I feel sorry for the animals and for the workers who tried to save them but the corporate bosses at Hershey sound like the sort of cheap penny pinching scum who'd refuse to pay to move the animals and then try and cover it up when they drown.

[msanthrope]

8. They shot the bison when they could not rescue them They didn't leave them to drown

but euthanized them. Apparently they tried for hours to rescue them, but lost the battle.

[bklyncowgirl]

12. Big scared animals are dangerous to handle.

The time to rescue them was a couple of days before when they could have gotten them onto a trailer and hauled them out of there.

[jn2375]

14. one was shot and one euthanized because they were drowning

witnesses are saying more animals then the bison were lost, I still can't believe they didn't call for help they spent two hours trying to help them plenty of time to get help.

[michaz]

10. Guess they never heard of emergency plans. n/t

[xchrom]

11. Exactly. Nt

[happyslug]

15. Animals in the wild die in river crossings.

River crossings are inherently dangerous and given the tendency for most creeks and rivers in the developed world to be "Channeled" so that more of the former river banks can be used for other purposes, the Bison had no bank to climb onto.

During WWII, the US Army came up with an amphibious Jeep, the US Army disliked it, for the Rivers it was crossing in Western Europe were call channeled so the Amphibious Jeep had no way to enter the water except at boat docks. The Russians, loved the Amphibious Jeeps, for the Russian Rivers were NOT channeled and thus you had low banks that the Amphibious Jeeps could enter and then exit any river.

I bring up the WWII era Amphibious Jeep for looking at the video, the Bison had no River bank to walk up. They were trapped between the Bridge embankments and the channel of the river. There was no place for them to walk up and out of the water (And I mean walk, NOT climb, the river channel forced the Bison to CLIMB out of the river, something bison have a problem in the first place, given their head is that much lower then cattle.

Sorry, unless someone put a ramp down to the Bison so they could walk out of the river, the Bison were dead as soon as their entered the water. Anything else would have and did fail.