Wins for apes

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  October 2011:

CAIRO,  DUBLIN— Egyptian animal advocate Dina Zulfikar and John Carmody,  founder of the Animal Rights Action Network in Limerick, Ireland,  agree that their longterm goal is not bigger cages but no cages.  Yet both were ecstatic in September 2011 over winning larger cages for several chimpanzees and gorillas for whom there is little hope of life outside of zoos.

Zulfikar learned in June 2010 that the Giza Zoo in greater Cairo had for some time kept an elderly female chimp named Moza in solitary confinement,  deeming her unsuitable for display because of unsightly benign tumors,  which could not be safely removed.  After more than a year of campaigning,  Zulfikar persuaded the zoo management to accept the help of Phoenix Zoo behavior manager Hilda Tresz in introducing Moza to new quarters shared with Kuku,  a chimp formerly kept alone at the Fayoum Zoo.

Carmody in late 2010 distributed photos to media showing “a family of gorillas languishing at the Dublin Zoo in a dull,  cramped metal enclosure,”  he recalled.  After almost a year of exposés and follow-ups,  the zoo on August 26,  2011 unveiled plans for a new enclosure with “streams,  dense vegetation, small hills and rocky outcrops,  and forest paths with hidden viewing points for visitors,” Carmody told ANIMAL PEOPLE.