Dozens of lions, tigers and bears, survivors of a now-shuttered zoo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, are finally receiving urgent veterinary care after years of neglect.
The 62 big cats and two brown bears, found pacing weakly in claustrophobic cages, are undergoing evaluation and treatment before their eventual transfer to vast wildlife sanctuaries abroad.
This monumental rescue operation, one of the largest and most challenging of its kind, follows a recent agreement between Argentine authorities and an international animal welfare organization.
Lujan Zoo, famous for allowing visitors to handle and pose with big cats, was closed in 2020 due to mounting safety concerns. However, the plight of the captive animals there only worsened.
For five years, the remaining creatures were sustained by a few loyal zookeepers who, despite losing their jobs, continued to feed and care for the stranded lions and tigers. Most of the animals, tragically, did not survive.
When the international animal welfare group Four Paws first visited in 2023, caretakers counted 112 lions and tigers — a stark fall in the number of animals, given that more than 200 big cats were believed to have been living at the zoo when it closed.
Two years on, almost half of them have succumbed to illness due to poor nutrition, wounds from fights with animals they’d never encounter in the wild, infections caused by a lack of medical attention, and organ failure from the stress of living in such cramped conditions.
“It was really shocking,” says the organisation’s chief program officer, Luciana D’Abramo, pointing to a three-meter-square cage crammed with seven female lions. “Overcrowded is an understatement.”
Next door, two Asian tigers share a tiny cage with two African lions — a “social composition that would never be found in nature,” D’Abramo says. “There’s a lot of hostility, fighting.”
A single lion typically gets 10,000 square meters to itself at the sanctuaries run by Four Paws around the world.
After striking an agreement with Argentina’s government earlier this year, Four Paws took over responsibility for the surviving wild animals in Lujan last month.
The memorandum of understanding involved Argentina committing to end the sale and private ownership of exotic felines in the large South American country, where enforcement efforts often run aground across 23 provinces that have their own rules and regulations.
Although the Vienna-based organisation has previously evacuated starving tigers from Syria during the country’s civil war, bears and hyenas left abandoned in the war-ravaged Iraqi city of Mosul, and neglected lion cubs from the besieged Gaza Strip, it has never before rescued such a large number of big cats.
“Here, the number of animals and the conditions where they are kept make this a much bigger challenge,” said Dr. Amir Khalil, the veterinarian leading the group’s emergency mission. “This is one of our biggest missions... not only in Argentina or Latin America, but worldwide.”
On Thursday, veterinarians and experts from the organisation were scrambling around the derelict zoo to assess the animals one by one. Most had not been vaccinated, sterilized, or microchipped for identification.
The team whisked sedated lions and tigers onto operating tables, dispensing nutrients, antibiotics and doses of pain medication via IV drips.
The quick checkups frequently transformed into emergency surgery. One tiger was treated for a bleeding gash to its tail last week, another for a vaginal tumor. Several tigers and lions needed root canal treatment to repair infected molars that had been broken on the steel bars of their cages.
Others received treatment for claws that had grown inward from walking too much on unnatural, plank flooring in the spartan enclosures.
After evaluating each animal in the coming weeks, Four Paws will arrange for their transfer to more expansive, natural homes around the world.
Some Argentine zookeepers who spent decades feeding and caring for the big cats say they’re happy to see Four Paws improving the animals’ conditions. But there is also a sense of nostalgia for how things were.
“It used to be a very popular place... I’ve seen people cry because they could touch a lion or feed a tiger with a bottle,” says Alberto Diaz, who spent 27 years working with the wild cats at Lujan Zoo, overseeing hands-on experiences that catered to countless tourists.
“Time changes, laws change, and you have to adapt or get left behind.”
