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This update is in honor of Lele the brown lemur. 

The following excerpt is from pages 19 & 20 of the 54-page letter that was sent to the board of directors July 29, 2018. 

"Lele had a difficult life. He was passed back and forth from the Austin Zoo to another facility multiple times prior to current management taking over. In 2009, Lele was housed with the other brown lemurs at the zoo. He received a severe injury to the back of his neck and was removed to the education building to recover. After his injury, Lele was moved to a solitary enclosure in the backyard, where he remained until the summer of 2017. Lele was very old by this point. His spine was fused, and he had severe arthritis, as determined by veterinarians and X-rays. As the weather grew hotter, Lele's condition deteriorated. Zookeepers repeatedly noted these concerns. Eventually management consented to move him into the air conditioning. He was housed in a small bird cage on the kitchen porch. His condition was assessed by a zoo veterinarian, who determined that in addition to Lele's advanced age arthritis, he was also now suffering acute kidney failure. The veterinarian recommended euthanasia, but management decided against this. Rather than give Lele the compassionate end of life he deserved, management chose to use an aggressive medical protocol to prolong his life and suffering. Lele endured weeks of painful daily injections, oral medications, and subcutaneous fluids administration. 

In October 2017, Lele had an apparent cerebral incident that left him unable to move. This caused him to fall to the bottom of his bird cage, where he lay motionless until he was discovered by a zookeeper. Management was alerted to his immobile state and again chose against administering humane euthanasia. He survived the night, and his condition remained unchanged in the morning. This was on a Sunday. Two zookeepers volunteered to drive Lele to a emergency vet to have him euthanized, since his regular veterinarian was out of town. Both zookeepers were denied permission to do this. Lele lay motionless and alone and suffering kidney failure for approximately twenty-four hours before he ultimately died on his own. The zookeepers were reprimanded for overstepping their bounds by suggesting he needed to be euthanized."

Will you help us hold Austin Zoo accountable to make sure we can do better for Lele's comrades? Please share this petition (sometimes it takes seeing a petition 7 times for someone to sign).