Ivan (gorilla)

Ivan was a western lowland gorilla born in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was captured from the wild as a baby and brought to live with humans. For the first few years of his life he lived with his owners, but soon he got too big for a human house and they moved him to a 40' x 40' concrete enclosure on display to the public at the B&I shopping center in Tacoma, Washington, where he spent the next 27 years of his life. After local animal welfare organizations successfully campaigned for his release to a facility that could care for Ivan properly, he was placed at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Shortly after this, he was placed on permanent loan to Zoo Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia. He spent his remaining years at Zoo Atlanta and died from complications during a medical procedure in August 2012.

In 1987, the animal rights group PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare Society), upset at the conditions in which Ivan lived, began a campaign on his behalf. PAWS encouraged the community of Tacoma and other nearby cities to protest and to boycott the B&I shopping center. The community collected signatures, raised and donated money to PAWS, took out newspaper ads, and raised $30,000 to buy Ivan from the B&I shopping center to be re-homed within Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.

In 1991 National Geographic Explorer aired a documentary entitled The Urban Gorilla. The film featured Ivan in his small enclosure and another gorilla, Willie B., who had previously been living in similar circumstances, but had since been released in a large zoo habitat and was re-learning naturalistic gorilla behavior. The contrast between the two gorillas was so pronounced that overnight Ivan became a national animal welfare concern. His story was covered in several publications, including People and The New Yorker. In 1992, there were rumors that Michael Jackson offered to buy Ivan and keep him at his personal zoo in California, though there is no officially known offer.

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