Warsaw (AFP) - Five of nine tigers that narrowly survived a gruelling journey across Europe set off on Saturday for their new home at a Spanish animal refuge after weeks of recovery at a Polish zoo.
"The
tigers have left. We're very happy that in just 24 to 30 hours they will
arrive," said Malgorzata Chodyla, spokeswoman for the zoo in Poznan,
western Poland.
Their
destination is the Primadomus Wildlife Refuge in the southeastern Spanish town
of Villena.
Chodyla
said there was a brief scare, as two of the tigers did not want to sleep,
despite the sedatives they were given.
"When
the whole team has to enter the enclosure to carry out the tiger and it
suddenly lifts its head up, those are some tense moments. But everything
happened safely," she told AFP.
She added
that the vehicle had heating and the tigers had enough room to switch
positions.
In late
October, Polish border authorities found 10 emaciated and dehydrated big cats
in the back of a truck taking them from Italy to a zoo in Russia's Dagestan
Republic.
Polish
prosecutors charged two Italian truck drivers and a Russian man believed to
have organised the journey with animal abuse after the truck got stuck for days
on Poland's border with Belarus.
Prosecutors
also charged a Polish border service veterinarian for failing to properly
examine the tigers when they first arrived at the Koroszczyn crossing, where
one of them died.
The
surviving nine tigers were taken to two Polish zoos.
The Poznan
zoo described them as "emaciated, dehydrated, with sunken eyes, excrement
stuck to their fur, urine burns, in a total state of stress, without the will
or desire to live" when they were first discovered.
According
to animal rights organisations, there are only between 3,200 and 3,900 tigers
in the wild worldwide.
Another
7,000 are held in captivity, mainly in Asia.
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