An animal rights group urged the Department of Environment and Natural Resources yesterday to revoke the permits of caretakers of wildlife animals after two ostriches ran loose in Quezon City earlier this week.
The Philippine Animal Welfare Society said in a statement that the incident “shows how loosely permits are handed out to people who keep wild animals as pets in our country.”
The group said that loud sounds such as those coming from vehicles cause the flightless birds great distress, which is why the government should not have granted a permit to the animals’ caretaker. According to a witness, the ostriches’ owner lives near the gated community where the birds were found.
Read: 2020 Gets Weirder: Ostrich runs loose in Quezon City
“The fact that the ostriches were running around for as long as they did with no caretaker chasing after them demonstrates that the owner is not capable of effectively controlling the animals or monitoring them,” the animal rights group said.
The organization condemned the act of keeping wildlife animals as pets and said it is “unethical to allow people to keep them at the cost of these animals’ misery. Further, a wild animal’s needs can never be sufficiently met by its keepers.”
It pointed out that based on videos taken of the incident, the animals did not appear to be in good health because “[t]heir feathers were covered in grime” and there were “bald spots” in some parts of their bodies.
The organization said that while the episode may have given Filipinos “a good laugh,” it could have led to “serious injuries” for both the “scared” ostriches and the humans who captured them.
A Quezon City resident named Dino Rivera was the first to film one of the ostriches on video as it was gracefully running around a subdivision a few days ago. A couple of hours later, another person found a second ostrich gallivanting around the area. Both animals were captured but their owner remains unidentified.
