LAGOS, Oct 26 \u2014 \u00a0Turkey\u2019s decision to keep an African baby gorilla rescued from trafficking defies logic, a Nigerian conservation NGO that was preparing to receive it for onward repatriation, said yesterday.<\/p>\n
The primate was five months old when he was discovered at Istanbul airport in a wooden crate just before Christmas en route from Nigeria to Thailand and taken in a zoo in the hills outside Istanbul to recover.<\/p>\n
Nigeria sought his repatriation and Turkey\u2019s conservation authorities launched the process but halted it after a DNA test confirmed Zeytin belonged to a species not native to Nigeria.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Turkish officials announced that Zeytin would not be repatriated to Nigeria but kept in a zoo in Turkey.<\/p>\n
Pandrillus Foundation in Nigeria was preparing to house Zeytin with another young gorilla of the same sub-species before sending the pair to a sanctuary in central Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are exceedingly disappointed. There is no logic in what the Turkish government is doing,\u201d Pandrillus Foundation director Liza Gadsby told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if Turkey doesn\u2019t want to send him to Nigeria, but directly to a gorilla sanctuary, that\u2019s fine. But they need to do the right thing for this animal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did the right thing by confiscating him in the first place,\u201d but keeping him in Turkey \u201cgoes against everything that they\u2019re supposed to be doing as a signatory to CITES\u201d, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, she said.<\/p>\n
The Pandrillus Foundation has another gorilla which was confiscated by Nigerian customs over two years ago.<\/p>\n
Gadsby said it would begin a process on Monday to repatriate the other gorilla to a habitat country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never intended to keep her,\u201d she said. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAGOS, Oct 26 \u2014 \u00a0Turkey\u2019s decision to keep an African baby gorilla rescued from trafficking defies logic, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,144625,144624,144621,144622,128,144620,338,144623],"class_list":{"0":"post-242394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cites-compliance-controversy","11":"tag-istanbul-airport-wildlife-rescue","12":"tag-nigerian-conservation-ngo","13":"tag-pandrillus-foundation","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-turkey-african-baby-gorilla-trafficking","16":"tag-wildlife","17":"tag-zeytin-repatriation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}