If you feared for your life, would you stop to consider the lives of animals?
In the chaos and destruction of war, the impact of human conflict on animals is easily overlooked. Fortunately, there are people like Dr Amir Khalil who have made it their lives work to rescue forgotten animals from conflict zones.
This week on Undiscovered, we hear the story of a bear, Lula, and a lion, Simba, who were abandoned in Mosul Zoo during the chaos of Isis occupation and the battle for liberation.
You can listen to the entire story now.
Dr Khalil works for charity the international charity, Four Paws, who fight cruelty to animals worldwide. They have saved animals from war zones all over the world including Bosnia, Egypt, Zimbabwe, India, Gaza and Libya. According to The New Yorker, each mission costs tens of thousands of dollars.
Based on the success of the mission in Mosul, there was a campaign for the charity to come to the aid of a Zoo in Aleppo, which similarly abandoned amid conflict. There they rescued another Lion, Saeed, who is believed to have been born in captivity during the war in Syria. As of February 2018, Simba and Saeed have been moved to their ‘forever home’ in South Africa.
As for Lula, she is still based in the Jordanian wildlife rescue centre “Al Ma'wa for Nature and Wildlife” where her and Simbia were originally evacuated too. She seems to be doing very well.
This is the second episode of our new series Undiscovered - a podcast that cuts through the noise in your newsfeed.
Listen to the whole episode, subscribe and catch up on episode one here.