China Wildlife Park Offers Lion to Kabul
Zoo
January 27, 2002
The Badaling Wildlife Park, located on the outskirts of Beijing, has offered to donate a lion to Kabul's zoo to replace Marjan, the lion that has come to represent Afghanistan's struggle for peace. Marjan, originally a gift from Germany many years ago, was half blind, nearly toothless and severely malnourished when he died January 27.
The lion's death and reports of the poor conditions at the Kabul Zoo have generated an outpouring of sympathy from around the world. The London-based World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) recently arrived in Kabul to care for and treat the neglected animals.
Animal donations are of symbolic political importance to China and the Badaling Wildlife Park has offered one of its 84 lions as an expression of "the call for world peace," the China news agency Xinhua reported.
