Vantara, a private zoo in Gujarat, India, run by Anant Ambani, the heir to one of India's biggest fortunes, has reportedly gathered more than 150,000 animals since 2022. Many are endangered. Conservation groups have asked how so many animals, from so many places, arrived so fast.
Last week, the United Nations body that regulates trade in endangered species asked its secretariat to review 11 cases with unresolved questions about how animals were transferred to Vantara.
Sign the petition urging the CITES Secretariat to finish that review, publish what it finds, and keep the process open until the origin of every animal is documented.
Vantara denies wrongdoing and says it brings in animals legally to protect their welfare. India's Supreme Court cleared it last year, and CITES has not concluded that its imports were illegal. Vantara has also paused imports for a year and hired a former head of CITES to oversee its work. Still, a CITES fact-finding mission warned that bringing in large numbers of animals could unintentionally create demand for animals taken illegally from the wild. The questions in these 11 cases are still open.
Before the committee met, lobbying firms working on Vantara's behalf approached UK officials, whose country chaired the meeting, seeking a more sympathetic view of how India handles imports. UK ministers were advised not to engage formally, to protect the committee's fairness. Vantara says it did not hire or pay any lobbyists, and reports say the firms were working for free. Either way, a facility this large and this well-connected should be able to show exactly where its animals came from.
Publishing the findings would either put doubts to rest or show where problems remain. Both outcomes are better for the animals than silence.
When a single private zoo can reportedly gather more than 150,000 animals in just a few years, the world deserves to know where every one of them came from.
Sign the petition and demand the CITES Secretariat finish its review and make the answers public.
