Zoo boss targeted with hate mail after floods

Prague zoo’s director has become the target of hate mail and phone calls since he ordered the deaths of a number of captive animals as flood waters rose in the Czech capital.

“Some even said that they were cold executions ... that is far away from reality and it hurts,” said Petr Fejk. “Those were the hardest decisions in my life.”

He said he is not really doing any soul searching, certain that he made the right decisions, – the only decisions – that were possible.

Flood waters rose so rapidly that much of the city, including the zoo, had little warning of the rising onslaught. Fejk said that with just a little more time, much more could have been done.

Fejk was forced to put down an elephant, a hippo, a bear and a lion, fearing they could become dangerous to the public.

And while zoo officials realised that the public might mourn with them, none of them anticipated they would be attacked for decisions made in desperate moments.

“If I had know that in time ... we would have had time to evacuate other animals as well,” said Fejk.

“But I don’t have a feeling that I have neglected something.”

Marta Kubisova, a famous singer and an animal activist, wrote in a newspaper opinion column that if “Fejk had been the director of a retirement home during the flood crises, he would probably have had the elderly men and women, who could have drowned, be shot dead.”

She charged that while rescuers were saving elderly people who didn’t want to leave their homes, little was done for the zoo’s animals.