Bulgaria's zoos do not cover EU standards and most of them even work in violation of Bulgarian law, according to Yavor Gechev of the Four Paws foundation and Ruslan Serbezov of the Environment Ministry.

“There are 20 zoos in Bulgaria and eight of them do not have a license,” Serbezov told the bTV national channel. “They do not correspond to EU regulations. The natural habitat is lost somewhere in the concrete, iron and lack of space.”

According to Gechev, those zoos are yet another legacy of socialism when the main goal was to have a zoo with animals and nobody cared much about the animals.

Gechev told of the Haskovo zoo where one of the bears died in the winter of 2008, but due to lack of a suitable freezer space, it was left in the cage with the other bear. The visitors were told it was hibernating.

According to Gechev, the zoos' management never sought help from the animal protection organisations and added that the number of zoos in Bulgaria is unnecessary large. “We don't need so many concrete concentration camps,” he said.