Four beluga whales made a long journey last week—over land.
They traveled from Ontario, Canada, to Chicago, Illinois. Using custom-made slings, caretakers loaded them into temperature-controlled containers. They transported the containers via truck to an airport, where they loaded the containers on an airplane.
The four whales are named Caspian, Peekachu, Rain, and Secord. They are from Marineland, a theme park in Canada which closed three years ago. Marineland had over 30 whales. Their enclosure in the theme park wasn’t big enough. Twenty whales have died at Marineland since 2019.
Animals held for long periods in captivity typically lose survival skills. They could die if released back into the wild. So four aquariums in the United States and one in Spain agreed to take in belugas from Marineland.
As part of the rescue efforts, a team of experts flew to Canada to meet the whales’ caretakers and study the whales’ health records.
“This is a very complex and unprecedented rescue effort,” says Charlie Jacobsma, director of animal behavior and training at the at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. “This has never been done before.”
Upon arrival at the Shedd Aquarium, the four whales from Canada interacted through gates with other whales already living there. Four other whales from Marineland were also transferred to Shedd in July.
“Belugas are very social animals,” says Jacobsma. “It was really special to be able to see some of our animals pairing up with these new animals.”
A day later, a similar operation was underway involving 30 lions and tigers from a zoo in Lujan, Argentina.
The zoo was famous for letting visitors handle and pose for pictures with the lions and tigers. But it closed in 2020 over safety and animal welfare concerns.
The animal caretakers lost their jobs, but some took it upon themselves to continue feeding the animals. Even so, decreased care devastated the animals’ health. The zoo had 200 big cats in 2020. Now only 62 are still alive.
On Friday, 30 of those cats made the move to wildlife sanctuaries, one in South Africa and one near Denver, Colorado. International animal-welfare organization Four Paws is looking for new homes for the big cats left at the Argentina zoo.
From the time of Creation, God gave humans a responsibility to care for the animals He created. (Genesis 1:28; Proverbs 12:10)
