Tallinn Zoo director and department heads clash over animal policy

Six department heads at Tallinn Zoo are in a deep dispute with director Kaupo Heinma, who has led the institution for the past three years, ERR reports. Their central disagreement is over which animals a modern zoo should keep.

Eesti Ekspress reported that staff presented Heinma with a draft collection plan this summer. It set out which animals should be bred, which should not, which new animals should be brought in and which should be sent elsewhere.

A welfare specialist who joined the zoo last year marked many animals in red, saying their cages or enclosures did not provide adequate conditions. Heinma also believes some animals should not be kept in Tallinn. He has said, for example, that elephants should not be kept there because they must retreat to a cramped elephant house when the weather turns cold.

Staff say Heinma sees animal welfare in extremes. The zoo’s former director, Mati Kaal, offered the example of a person who could be happy both in a castle and in a one-room apartment in Mustamäe.

The sharper dispute is what to do with animals marked in red: let them live out their lives in their current conditions or empty the cages and enclosures immediately. Last Tuesday, the six department heads decided there was no point in appealing to Heinma and agreed to approach Tallinn’s leading politicians instead. Deputy Mayor Kristjan Järvan said he was not yet taking a position on the zoo.