OIPA International discover this awful place after a tourist segnalation: The Bitola Zoo, is a zoo in Bitola, Macedonia, founded on 1st May 1950 with the help of the Skopje’s, Zagreb’s, Belgrade’s and Subotica’s zoos.
The zoo hosts several animal species, local and wildlife ones.
Clearly from the pictures these animals are kept in improper conditions and with no attention for their ethological needs.
In the zoo there are several farm and local animals and also 4 bears, 3 tigers (1 couple and 1 male living alone in his cage), tens of monkeys and two lions.

Here the heartbreaking witness report:

“The lion and tigers where probably not drugged, but they where lifeless… You can actually pet them and they wont even twitch. For me a lion that does that is a miserable lion. A wild animal acting like that, that doesn’t even have the power to rise up to scare me of.
You can see in their eyes they are so unhappy. Every animal in there look unhappy.
Those poor bears going in circles every single day, in that stinking hole. Where there is nothing green nothing fun for them to play with, just a circle of stone.
The monkeys living in that little cave all together with nothing to play with, and anyway there isn’t place enough for them to do that.
The wolves and foxes, they are so stressed out. You could hear them soob and cry walking fast back and forth like they were having a panic attack.
I’ve seen the people working there feeding the animals with only bread.
It smells like death in that place…”

The owners are accused of feeding alive animals with the dead ones or with stray dogs.

The zoo claim that it plays a significant role in the sphere of social living, especially in the sector of education as well as the protection of certain animal species. We obviously disagree with that, this place must be closed as soon as possible and the animals moved to a sanctuary.
Taking care of animals is a difficult task, even more difficult if we are talking about wildlife species like tigers, lions, bears and monkeys. Those species have complex ethological needs. In their natural habitats they are free to walk and run for long distances, many of them hunt to feed themselves, they have complex social lives and boundaries. Keeping those animals in tiny concrete cages is an incredible and cruel abuse against them.
We do not tolerate anymore those animals mistreatments!
Animals are not objects which can be used to raise money and run a business.

OIPA International and Animalia Ohrid ask to the Macedonian Government to close the Zoo and take strict legal action against the persons responsible of this abuses.