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<\/a>A pro-animal rights anarchist group has set fire to a zoo in France in protest at what it believes to be the illegal imprisonment of wildlife.<\/p>\nActivists running the website Le Laboratoire Anarchiste claimed responsibility for the attack on the Peaugres Safari park in France\u2019s central Ard\u00e8che region last week,\u00a0The Local<\/a>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n Luckily, the blaze remained confined to the\u00a0zoo\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0entrance, and did not spread to any of the enclosures or the large area of forest nearby.<\/p>\n In a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0on their site, the anarchists said they attacked the park because \u201czoos are like prisons.\u201d The message continued: \u201cZoos pretend to protect these animals, when in fact at the time they were discovered by colonialists, they were decimated and thrown into cages and brought back here to be exhibited as entertainment, as gifts in circuses and zoos.\u201d<\/p>\n For Le Laboratoire Anarchiste, zoos are inextricably linked with the horrors of colonialism. \u201cZoos remind us of those colonialists who didn’t just massacre and exile non-human animals but by using the same arguments that they had that \u2018human zoos\u2019 which were developed during the bloody process of colonialization,\u201d the statement explained.<\/p>\n The fire burned through the night on August 1 before firefighters arrived to suppress it the following morning. The zoo was forced to close until August 3. On its official\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0page, the center thanked the public for their messages of support and said the fire was \u201cof criminal origin.\u201d<\/p>\n The zoo confirmed that none of its animals or staff were injured by the fire, which forced all tickets booths out of operation. An investigation has been opened into the attack, The Local said.<\/p>\n The anarchists\u2019\u00a0statement detailed how devices were planted to spread the\u00a0fire<\/a>\u00a0as quickly as possible. Two devices were placed on each wooden ticket booth\u2014one to begin the blaze and the other to smash the glass\u2014allowing it to spread faster. The activists said they were confident the fire would not spread to the forest because there was no wind and the zoo is separated from the trees by a patch of land.<\/p>\n The statement criticized humanity\u2019s propensity to cage wild animals for its pleasure, whether \u201cculinary, emotional, cultural or scientific.\u201d It also asserts that the walls, bars and electrified fences are a long way from the animals\u2019\u00a0natural environment, and demands \u201cthe destruction of all prisons, whatever the shape of their bars.\u201d<\/p>\n