Four Bengal tigers will be transferred this Friday to a sanctuary in South Africa, after living 15 years in overcrowded conditions in a train car converted into a cage, in a field near the town of Justo Daract, 140 kilometers from the city of San Luis. Animals they had been abandoned by a circus, reported from the international organization Four Paws.
The history of the tigers dates back to 2007, when the owner of a circus that passed through Justo Daract, could not take a male and a female and left them in the care of a farmer, with the promise that he was going to pick them up again, but he never came back.
Then the two tigers became a family of four, and for 15 years they have been walking from one side to the other in a wagon converted into a 75-square-meter cage.
This story reached the ears of Egyptian veterinarian Amir Khalil, a wildlife specialist and director of project development for the international organization Four Paws, which is dedicated, among other things, to the rescue of animals in unsanitary living conditions, last November. .
Since then, all their teams began to carry out the necessary process to rescue these felines.
“Part of the work team has already been in San Luis for 15 days, taking care of doing the preliminary medical studies to rescue the four animals and then proceed with the transfer.”, explained Luciana D’Abramo, Director of Development of the organization, who highlighted the joint work that has been carried out for months in San Luis with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of the Nation and the provincial fauna agency.
How will the transfer be?
The rescue is scheduled to take place this Friday and for that there will be a special operation that will transfer the animals to Buenos Aires, to then board a commercial flight to their final destination, South Africa.
“At this time, we focus on being able to teach the animals to move in the new compartments that have been adapted to move it and lose their fear to avoid sedation since tigers are very sensitive to the effects of anesthetics,” the coordinator remarked. .
The operation will last around 50 hours, from its start in San Luis to Buenos Aires, then board a commercial flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, to then arrive at the LionsRock Big Cat Sanctuary.
This sanctuary has 1,800 hectares, so that the different felines that are rescued from around the world can have all the necessary conditions to develop their lives and adapt after years in captivity and hunting, trade or breeding of big cats is strictly prohibited. and the interactions of wild animals with visitors.
Four Paws has offices in 14 countries, wildlife sanctuaries in 11 countries and has been active in many more, including Syria, Gaza, Pakistan, Sudan and Cambodia, it was reported.
However, The rescue of the four tigers in Argentina marks the first time the world animal welfare organization is active in South America.