The Road to Baghdad

Lawrence Anthony (right) and Baghdad Zoo staff. When Anthony arrived at the zoo, all but three staff had left after receiving no pay for months. Stephan Bognar of WildAid, a San Francisco-based organization, came to Baghdad with funds and paid zoo staff so they would return to work.

Even before the Iraq war, Anthony had made known to government officials of various countries who vacationed at his South African game reserve the certain fate of the animals in the famed Baghdad Zoo. As a Scientologist, he considers it his duty to not only safeguard and improve the conditions of all things living, but to enlist the support of others to join him in such efforts.

As soon as the worst of the fighting was over, he flew to Kuwait at his own expense and worked his way into Iraq, the first civilian to be admitted. He was shocked at what he found: scores of dead or starving animals, locked in filthy cages to which no one had keys; scores of missing animals, likely stolen for food or for profit on the black market; and only three zoo staff members — the rest had left after receiving no pay for many weeks.

No water, power or food was anywhere in sight — neither for the animals nor the remaining three of the zoo’s 36 staff.

When he arrived in Baghdad, gunfire was still common. Undaunted, he went to work, feeding, watering, cleaning the animals — and the zoo staff — with anything he could beg, borrow or appropriate.

“Some animals had to be fed to other animals,” he reported. “Locked cages had to be broken open, filthy animals and cages were scrubbed with disinfectant and precious water — when there was water.”

Many animals died, many succeeded in their struggle to survive. Those near death in Saddam Hussein’s private zoos were located, rescued and pulled from the brink, then nursed back to health.

The zoo had been stripped of every last scrap of equipment and material — door knobs, shovels, wheelbarrows, buckets, hoses — all gone with the looters.

“I locked up the animal food to keep it from being carried off,” he said. In desperation, Anthony and staff set up a “Baghdad Zoo Jail,” where they held looters for a week, then released them. None returned. The U.S. Army subsequently posted guards around the zoo around the clock so Anthony could get on with his work.