JOHANNEBURG - A South African animal welfare group today condemned a plan by the Malaysian government to send four gorillas, illegally smuggled out of west Africa, to Pretoria Zoo.

Marcelle Meredith, the executive director of South Africa's National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) said it was imperative for the gorillas to be returned to their country of origin.

"We believe that the gorillas now known as the 'Taiping Four' must be returned to their country of origin, Cameroon," she said in a statement to the Sapa news agency.

"The NSPCA opposes any option to relocate them to South Africa."

The four gorillas were smuggled from Cameroon to Nigeria and exported via South Africa on fraudulent captive-born documents to Taiping Zoo in Malaysia.

The Malaysian government is reported to have claimed that it was tricked into signing a trade permit and confiscated the gorillas from Taiping Zoo.

It is said to believe the gorillas would struggle to survive if returned to the wild, and that Pretoria Zoo is best equipped to care for them.

Send them home

The International Primate Protection League said the gorillas should be sent to Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon - a centre for gorillas rescued from trade.

NSPCA spokesman Rick Allan said that this was what the Cameroon government wanted.

"South Africa has no native gorillas," Allan pointed out.

He said five gorillas had already died in the Pretoria Zoo, which currently had only one gorilla.

Willie Labuschagne, the director of the Pretoria Zoo, has defended the plan, saying his zoo was the best place for the primates, who would be killed if let out into the wild.

"The National Zoological Gardens (in Pretoria) is, weight by weight, far more advanced and professional than the Limbe Wildlife Centre. It is really not comparing apples with apples," he told AFP earlier this year.

He said that about US$146,000 had been made available to upgrade the gorilla enclosure at the zoo.

"The present bush meat (meat from wild animals including gorillas and monkeys) situation in Africa is horrendous. They (the gorillas) don't have a great life expectancy if they go back into the wild," he said. - AFP