Warring tigers leave London Zoo with a £5m bill

When a tiger called Sarah arrived at London Zoo one day last summer, her keepers hoped she would stir something in the loins of Lumpur. The 14-year-old tigress had successfully found romance in the West Midlands, supplementing the shrinking population of diminutive Sumatran tigers with new cubs at Dudley Zoo.

London Zoo desperately wanted Sarah to repeat the trick with 11-year-old Lumpur, who had been unable to breed despite sharing a pound with a younger female, Raika, for eight years. The two zoos agreed to swap tigresses. Unfortunately, the only sparks that flew between Sarah and Lumpur were angry ones, with hissing, snarling and even physical violence. Instead of celebrating the birth of cubs, the world's oldest scientific zoo has had to separate the warring pair – and was forced to come up with a multimillion-pound plan for a new enclosure. Next year, the zoo will launch a public appeal for a big cat enclosure which is expected to cost as much as the £5.3m spent on its Gorilla Kingdom exhibit last year.

The story of the unhappy, lovelorn tigers emerged after The Independent obtained a copy of the last licensing inspection of the 180-year-old zoo by Westminster Council. Dated 2 November 2007, the report stipulated that the zoo must, as a condition of its new licence, submit plans for a new outdoor tiger paddock within two years. "The tiger paddock needs to be enlarged and provide separation for the tigers," the inspectors wrote. The zoo initially told The Independent that the council requirement was for general "animal management". But Barnardo Luque, a City of London vet who was part of the five-strong inspection team, explained that he had recommended new accommodation after noticing a wound on one of Sarah's hind legs.

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"The suggestion was made because the tigress did appear to have some injuries," he said. "It was a situation that you might expect to see in large felines but, if you see an injury, you have to do something."

The vet added: "Apparently, she was a bad-tempered tiger."

Although the scratch was not deep and received veterinary treatment, Mr Luque feared that the dispute between the animals could develop into "a war situation". The zoo now hopes to swap Sarah back for Raika, but the process may take weeks.

In the meantime, Sarah has been moved into a second outdoor pen used by lions, which means that although she has her own space, there is less room for the zoo's two Asian lions Abby and Lucifer (named after the number on his tag: 666).

The existing big cat compound, built in 1976, has two separate indoor areas but only one outdoor pound, with a total area of 620 square metres. In the wild, male tigers prowl between 60 and 100 square kilometres.

"It is quite an outdated facility and I want to create for lions and tigers what we have for gorillas," said David Field, the director of the London Zoological Society, the august body which runs London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire. "One of the things the tigers want is privacy. Sometimes they want to be together and sometimes they want to be apart. Having a multi-paddock system allows the tigers to be apart at some times and together at others."

Raika and Sarah, introduced to the zoo in the late 1990s, had repeatedly failed to breed – despite a Valentine's Day stunt in 2006 in which keepers doused red heart-shaped pieces of wood with human perfume.

Zoo managers arranged the swap with Sarah after contacting the European Endangered Species Breeding Programme, which keeps a stud book of captive tigers. Only an estimated 400 Sumatran tigers survive in the wild on their island in Indonesia, and their numbers are diminishing rapidly as a result of human encroachment, most notably from loggers. When the swap took place on 7 June last year, Sarah and Lumpur were slowly introduced to one another, first by Lumpur hearing the new feline, then by the sharing of the outdoor pound.

There were soon signs of problems. "We got the sense that Sarah wasn't keen on the proximity to the male. Any time the male got close to her she would get up and move. She might snarl or spit as the male went past," Mr Field recalled. "The male also didn't particularly like Sarah and he found her presence overbearing and didn't really want to know her."

Time and again the keepers tried, but after eight loveless months, they decided the pair would never become a couple and they were finally separated on 13 February.

Craig Redmond, of the Captive Animals Protection Society, said the introduction of new animals often caused problems in zoos, which his organisation wishes to ban. "Because animals are always moving about in the wild they can choose their own companions," he said. "You cannot replicate that in captivity; you can't allow the animals free movement.

"In a zoo, you put two animals in a cage and it seems to be the attitude of the zoo industry that there is likely to be a scrap and they have to sort it out for themselves. We hear these kinds of stories quite often and it goes on a lot more than people think."

London Zoo Facts and figures

*Founded: 1828

*Number of species: 755

*Number of animals: 15,104

*Area: 145,686 square metres

*Biggest draws: Asian lions, Sumatran tigers, African hunting dogs, giant anteaters, golden lion tamarin, meerkats, Malaysian tapirs, pygmy hippopotamus, black-footed penguins, Komodo dragons, Burmese pythons and leaf-cutting ants

*Open: 364 days a year (closed Christmas Day)

*Visitors: 1.1 million annually (2007)

*Tourism: Second most visited zoo in UK (Chester Zoo is first); 17th most visited UK visitor attraction

*Owners: Zoological Society of London

Sources: London Zoo, Association of Leading Visitor Attractions

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