ROME, Italy (AFP) — In ancient Rome, they would have been pitted against gladiators or served up at banquets.
Now a caiman, a python and a troop of monkeys that have been confiscated from mobsters, drug dealers or collectors find safe haven at a rescue center in the Eternal City.
Inside the majestic Appia Antica park near the historic city center, a veterinary clinic called “Our Animal Kingdom” is now home to exotic turtles, deer, boars, parrots, vultures, eagles and even a group of excitable lemurs.
Every year, Italy’s police and forest guard rescue around 400 exotic animals, according to Raffaele Manicone, head of the local branch of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
The sharp-toothed caiman was rescued from the back garden of a drug dealer in Rome, who kept him in a small greenhouse.
Lively, long-haired gibbons Tai and Martedi, who swing from ropes as they cross their pen, hail from Thailand and were confiscated separately from women who claimed they had simply found the monkeys on the streets of Italy and taken them home.
“Given my passion for wild animals, I began collaborating with the security forces about 10 years ago to save them,” clinic head Umberto Cara told AFP, explaining how hard it is for spaces to be made for such animals at local zoos.
– Chatty gibbons –
Cara, a man with a ready smile who drives a jeep around the grounds to check on his prized creatures, works for free, paying for both the animal’s medical care and their food and shelter by means of his day job as a vet for domestic pets.
“We transformed the clinic to help the wild animals, to cure them, to operate where necessary. The cages have been adjusted and reinforced to be able to hold dangerous animals,” he said, as the caiman gave a lazy yawn nearby.
While the turtles may mind their own business, Cara has formed strong bonds with many of his charges, especially the gibbons.
“Tai, where is Martedi?” he calls to the male, who tilts his white-ringed head immediately to nod towards his female companion.
And here they will stay as returning the animals to their original countries is complicated, and releasing them into the wild in Italy is a no-go. “It would be ecological madness because it would compromise the existing eco-system.”
Some of the animals are rescued by customs officers in Italy’s airports and ports, hubs in which smugglers are also regularly caught with valuable animal parts or skins stowed in false suitcase bottoms or stashed inside everyday objects.
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