Zoo administrator confronted with lethal menaces post baboon's demise
In late July 2025, the Nuremberg Zoo made a controversial decision to cull 12 healthy Guinea baboons due to overcrowding in their enclosure. This decision has sparked an ongoing legal investigation and intense public controversy under the German Animal Welfare Act.
Animal rights groups, including Pro Wildlife, have filed criminal complaints, alleging violations of animal protection laws and deeming the cull avoidable and illegal. The zoo, however, maintains that the decision followed years of intensive consideration and search for alternatives such as population control and rehoming, which ultimately failed.
The zoo director, Dag Encke, justified the cull as a "legitimate last resort to preserve the population" and claimed compliance with animal welfare regulations and European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) criteria. The animals were euthanized by shooting in a transport crate, and their bodies were used for research and fed to the zoo’s carnivores. This has sparked further ethical outrage and death threats against staff.
From a legal perspective, the investigation focuses on whether the culling conformed to the German Animal Welfare Act, which prohibits unnecessary suffering and mandates that animal euthanasia must be justified and humane. Critics argue that the zoo’s longstanding breeding policies caused the overpopulation and that the cull could have been avoided with better management. The zoo maintains it exhausted all other options and acted in accordance with animal welfare standards.
As of early August 2025, investigations by German authorities and public prosecutors are ongoing, with potential criminal charges hinging on forensic and regulatory analysis of whether the culling was proportional, necessary, and properly executed under German law.
Meanwhile, animal rights activists have set up a protest camp near Nuremberg Zoo and plan to demonstrate multiple times this week, demanding that no more primates be killed and that breeding be stopped. Unspecific threats via social media have also been received, and the Middle Franconia Police Headquarters is currently investigating around 170 communications for criminal content. Approximately 350 complaints about the culling of baboons have been received by the Nuremberg-Fürth Public Prosecutor's Office.
Threats against the staff of Nuremberg Zoo have been reported, and efforts are being made to shield them as much as possible. The director of Nuremberg Zoo, Dag Encke, has received ten concrete murder threats due to the culling of baboons, and the deputy director, Jörg Beckmann, has also received threats. The investigations into the threats against the staff are being handled by the Middle Franconia Police Headquarters.
The investigations by the Public Prosecutor's Office are focusing on whether there was a reasonable cause for the culling of the animals under paragraph 17 of the Animal Welfare Act. The zoo has faced criticism from animal rights activists following the culling of the baboons. Every peaceful protest is acceptable to the zoo, but the ongoing threats and demonstrations have caused significant disruption.
The Nuremberg Zoo remains steadfast in its belief that the cull was a necessary and lawful decision under the German Animal Welfare Act and international zoo association guidelines. The outcome of the ongoing investigations and legal proceedings will undoubtedly have far-reaching implications for the management of captive animal populations in Germany and beyond.
- Animal rights activists have organized protests near the Nuremberg Zoo, demanding an end to the culling of primates and a stop to breeding, while also addressing the issue within the context of other topics such as health-and-wellness, general-news, and crime-and-justice.
- As the investigations involving the controversial culling of Guinea baboons continue, other organizations may scrutinize and evaluate their own animal management practices, potentially affecting the health-and-wellness, general-news, and science sectors, not just criminal-and-justice, as their policies and procedures come under public scrutiny.
