Zoos, Aquariums and Wildlife Sanctuaries: Reopening

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:07 pm on 11 June 2020.

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Photo of Bob Stewart Bob Stewart Conservative, Beckenham 4:07, 11 June 2020

It certainly will upset me.

I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene on my good friend the Member for Southend zoo. I think zoos have a hugely important task in saving animals, and I speak from personal experience. I found a European brown bear in a cage in no-man’s land. It had existed there with nothing for three weeks. My soldiers and I lifted the bear up—it was called MacKenzie and it was big, 7 feet—took it away and managed to get it into Amsterdam zoo, where it had a glorious rest of life, rather than being stuck in a cage in the middle of Bosnia with no food and no water. Zoos do a great job in preserving bears like MacKenzie.