Two 12-year-old girls from Colorado Springs are about to reach their 6,000-signature goal with an online petition asking Denver’s Downtown Aquarium to get rid of its endangered tigers.
Lily Woods and her friend Raime Mckellip launched the Care2 petition Aug. 20 after visiting the aquarium several times, Lily’s mother, Wendy Blass, told petition website Care2.
With more than 5,400 supporters as of this writing, the petition is on track to reach its target before the end of the week.
“Lily is 12 and did this on her own, along with her friend Raime,” Blass said. “They have both been to the aquarium several times. It’s an issue that’s been in Lily’s heart for years, and she finally decided to take a stand for the tigers.”
The petition is aimed at Tilman J. Fertitta, CEO and owner of Houston-based Landry’s Restaurants, which runs the Downtown Aquarium.
Downtown Aquarium general manager Chad Ashley referred questions about the petition to Landry’s corporate public relations, which provided this statement to The Denver Post, attributed to James Prappas, director of animal husbandry:
“We are an AZA (Association of Zoos & Aquariums)-accredited facility and provide the highest degree of medical and nutritional care to our animals. These Sumatran tigers belong to the AZA community and are not the property of Landry’s. They have been entrusted to the Denver Aquarium as part of the AZA Species Survival Plan to prevent their extinction. AZA releases new standards on animal care each year. When the new standards are official, we will make any requested modifications as we always do.”
The petition contends that the Downtown Aquarium’s three endangered Sumatran tigers — Marah, Besar and Jalan — are kept in “a very small enclosure,” and that a better home for them might be something like Kerinci Seblat National Park in Indonesia, where 190 animals live in a park with roughly 60 square kilometers of space for each animal.
“Landry’s restaurants knows food, not tigers!” the petition said. “Tell their owner to send these wonderful tigers to a wild animal sanctuary in Colorado. These animals deserve the best life possible, and the aquarium does not offer that.”
Lily Woods is a strong-willed, straight-A student whose father was killed in Afghanistan in August 2009, when she was just 5, her mother said. She doesn’t eat meat (but does eat fish) and this topic has been on her mind for years.
“When the petition reaches 6,000 signatures, the authors are welcome to consider delivering the signatures at that time, but the signature goal will automatically jump up on the website to encourage as many people as possible to sign,” wrote Madison Donzis of Unbendable Media, which promoted the petition via e-mail.
