The owners of a reptile zoo in Canada are conveying a critical public appeal to raise funds for the survival of the zoo.

Maritime Reptile Zoo owners Lindsay Giles and Lindsay Giles have been in troubled waters on the financial front since May 2013 when the Burnside Business Park zoo was inaugurated. The husband-wife team has to spend from their own savings for the payment of the heat, the rent as well as the food for over a hundred reptiles at the zoo.

Mr Macdonald said that the opening of the zoo was "incredible". They were heavily booked, while they did quite a few exhibitions during the summer. They also used to have several visitors nearly every day. On the contrary, when it came to September, there was hardly any visitor at the zoo, he said.

According to Mr Macdonald, people do not have to pay to visit the zoo any more. Instead, the owners are asking for donations from the public so that they are able to keep the zoo open for visitors. He said that they had been going through a challenging time as they must decide between a couple of options. One option is finding homes for the animals at the zoo and, thereafter, shutting it down. The other option is to keep fighting for what they believe in.

The official Web site of the zoo states that it has educated numerous people in the past four years. It claims that it has found a new home for the rescued reptiles. There are some reptiles which are banned in Nova Scotia. The authorities complain that the end of the holiday season for school-going children turned out to be catastrophic for the zoo as it lost all its visitors once the children started going back to schools.

The zoo grabbed attention recently when a python was found to be the cause behind a couple of children in New Brunswick. Mr Macdonald, who handled the snake previously, described it as temperamental.