A tiger handler has been mauled by a big cat at a Gold Coast theme park, with emergency services saying she is in hospital with injuries to her arm.
A Queensland ambulance service (QAS) spokesperson said paramedics transported a woman from Dreamworld to the Gold Coast university hospital with “multiple lacerations to the arm” after “an incident involving a tiger” at about 9am Monday.
A Dreamworld spokesperson said an “incident occurred involving one of the park’s tigers and a trained tiger handler”.
“Dreamworld’s immediate focus is on the support of the team member,” the spokesperson said.
“This was an isolated and rare incident, and we will conduct a thorough review accordingly”.
The woman, who was initially reported by QAS as being aged in her 30s, was in a stable condition.
The QAS acting district director, Justin Payne, said the woman was 47 and an “experienced and senior” handler at Dreamworld.
Payne said the handler had received “serious lacerations and puncture wounds”.
“She was quite pale and feeling unwell,” he said.
But Payne said the handler’s bleeding “had been managed very well by first aid providers there at Dreamworld” and that she was “generally well”.
Dreamworld’s Tiger Island, opened almost 30 years ago as one of only two interactive tiger exhibits in the world, is home to Sumatran and Bengal tigers.
It hosts twice-daily tiger presentations at which guests are invited to be “mesmerised” by the tigers “as [they] glide underwater” and “be amazed by their might and raw power during feeding time”.
The Courier Mail reported in 2022 that one of Tiger Island’s most senior handlers was injured in an incident.
Visitors to Australia Zoo, on the Sunshine Coast, have also witnessed tiger handler maulings. In 2013, a handler sustained a crushed carotid artery, nicked jugular, paralysis to the left larynx and nerve damage to the left eye after being bitten in the neck after a tiger got “over excited”. In 2016 another handler sustained injuries to his wrist and forehead after an incident with a tiger that was “hot and bothered”.
Sumatran tigers are critically endangered, with fewer than 400 believed to still live in the wild, while the Bengal tiger is endangered. There are believed to be more captive tigers in the US alone than there are left in the wild.
Dr Ullas Karanth, a wildlife conservation zoologist and tiger expert based in India, said that “properly designed, well managed captive facilities” had a role in “helping tiger conservation efforts in the field”.
“They can engage a large number of citizens and educate them about the plight of wild tigers and hopefully move them into supporting field conservation actions in tiger range countries,” the emeritus director at the Centre for Wildlife Studies said.
Unfortunately, Karanth said, most places with captive tigers around the world did not fit that bill, adding those that bred tigers purely for entertainment were “not helpful at all”.
While Karanth said he could not comment on Australian facilities specifically, Griffith University associate professor Ali Chauvenet said facilities like Dreamworld would have to meet the same high standards for animal care and husbandry in this country as would more traditional zoos.
Prof Chauvenet said that institutions that kept animals had come “really, really far” in Australia from their inception as places of entertainment.
She said these institutions today played a role in keeping wildlife alive, in educating the public, in providing a refuge for endangered animals and as places to learn how to protect the last individuals of a species that may be left in the wild.
“All of these big mammals – tigers, gorillas, wolves – you will never be able to reproduce the environment they have in the wild,” Chauvenet said.
“But, then, you have got to weigh the pros and cons – tigers are extremely threatened in the wild and zoos are one of the last places they would be safe”.
Some animal welfare advocates disagree.
World Animal Protection Australia’s Suzanne Milthorpe said the Dreamworld incident was “another sad reminder that close interactions with wild animals held captive for entertainment purposes can be dangerous for both humans and the animals”.
“We call on the tourism industry to stop promoting close encounters with wild animals,” she said.
