Freeing Billy Doesn't Mean He'll be Free, Says Zoo's Friends

Photo by Anikia Malone via Flickr

Brenda Scott Royce, the director of publications for the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association who has written in defense of the zoo that wants to keep building their controversial pachyderm forest, has come out again on the Huffington Post against the activists clad in their "Free Billy" t-shirts.

"[They] wearing 'Free Billy' T-shirts and stickers aren't actually calling for his return to the wild. No one is advocating unlocking the zoo's gates and allowing the massive pachyderm to roam freely in Griffith Park. Nor are they suggesting he be airlifted to Malaysia, the country of his birth, and dropped off in what little remains there of the wild," she points out.

The activists want to send Billy to an animal sanctuary, which Royce says doesn't have to be accredited, has fewer resources and is held up to lower standards than accredited zoos like the LA Zoo. But what's to say that Los Angeles can't make a large sanctuary-like zoo that is accredited?