Letter: Wildlife is under pressure everywhere - particularly the animals in unnatural human captivity

The world famous-artist’s trail across London has left many a critic and amateur art-lover wondering what message, if any, the creative genius might have wished to convey.

Banksy does thrive on ambiguity, but I suggest that on this occasion, there is a message.

This becomes apparent with the final work, painted on the shutters of London Zoo, which depicts a gorilla lifting the shutters to release a captive sea lion and birds, with other wild creatures appearing to look on from inside.

Given that the previous animals depicted were a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans, a wild cat, piranhas, and a rhinoceros, the London Zoo artwork shouts from the rooftop (at me anyway), that wildlife everywhere is endangered or oppressed.

The fact that the powerful image appears at the entrance to a zoo can only make one think about the plight of wild animals, and especially the ones in unnatural human captivity.

With so many wildlife species worldwide at risk of extinction as a result of hunting, habitat loss, urbanisation, the use of toxic chemicals on the soil, and the effects of climate change, the artist might he hinting at this global catastrophe.

Wildlife is under pressure everywhere and we need to speak out on the issue. Polar bears struggle to exist on rapidly diminishing terrain.

A day doesn’t pass without another of those gruesome Facebook selfies of a hunter posing beside the carcass of a mighty elephant, tiger, rhino, or giraffe…dead eyes gazing blankly at us below the smirking faces of their killers.

Look at that image again of Banksy’s gorilla. It’s time to free the animals.

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny