Damian Aspinall: You all know my views on zoos prove me wrong

A few more thoughts

A lot of your argument is based on the premise that a lifetime of being involved with animals means that you know best, however, other people have spent their lives around wild animals and reached different conclusions; why is your view more valid than theirs?

You’ve mentioned that captive animals rarely get entirely natural diets but many species in zoos out live their wild counterparts so does it really matter?

You’ve used the term semi-wild to describe the situation that some animals find themselves in, is there such a thing as semi-wild? If an animal is not playing a role in a functioning ecosystem surely it is just captive no matter how big it’s enclosure?

Viewing animals in the wild can cause a disturbance to them, interrupting feeding or social behaviours. Is it not better to have zoo animals that are habituated to humans and then leave the wild ones alone?
 
Ned said:
A lot of your argument is based on the premise that a lifetime of being involved with animals means that you know best, however, other people have spent their lives around wild animals and reached different conclusions; why is your view more valid than theirs?
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Also the Aspinall parks are almost solely mammal based, so maybe he could speak for them but can he really say anything when it comes to conservation, treatment and welfare of other animals?
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
Personally I think there is and I believe this is why Damian came onto the forum but it takes two to tango and both sides need to avoid partisanship.
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Thank you i agree dialogue is important especially as i believe a lot of people who genuinely love zoos do not know or understand all the facts and therefore i can give them an honest perspective from someone who actually is responsible for two and someone who actually has very good zoos.
 
Mattaki said:
Also the Aspinall parks are almost solely mammal based, so maybe he could speak for them but can he really say anything when it comes to conservation, treatment and welfare of other animals?
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you can refer to me as Damian as Aspinall is a little formal. YEs we are mammal based and my conversations is about mammals in zoos however i doubt it would be much different for other species.
 
Neil chace said:
@Damian Aspinall- I completely understand if you do not want to answer this question, but if you are truly so anti-zoo, then why would you be on a zoo enthusiasts forum in the first place? I know there are a lot of people in the world that do not like zoos, and I completely respect that opinion. However, I don't think that this forum is the right place for an anti-zoo member. Why not just avoid zoos if you hate them so much?
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Because you cannot change people opinions without open discussion and this forum is a good place to do that.
 
Ned said:
A few more thoughts

A lot of your argument is based on the premise that a lifetime of being involved with animals means that you know best, however, other people have spent their lives around wild animals and reached different conclusions; why is your view more valid than theirs?

You’ve mentioned that captive animals rarely get entirely natural diets but many species in zoos out live their wild counterparts so does it really matter?

You’ve used the term semi-wild to describe the situation that some animals find themselves in, is there such a thing as semi-wild? If an animal is not playing a role in a functioning ecosystem surely it is just captive no matter how big it’s enclosure?

Viewing animals in the wild can cause a disturbance to them, interrupting feeding or social behaviours. Is it not better to have zoo animals that are habituated to humans and then leave the wild ones alone?
Click to expand...
Firstly i have never said nor think I implied I know best so lets move on from that.
My views have come from as stated being all my life in this field and as you say some of the people in this thread may also have done that and have a different view. Of course that is fine and that is the way the world is however to understand me you need to understand why i feel the way i do and why i may feel differently from the others. I will do my best to answer that.
For years i believed what we were doing was fantastic world class in fact and our breeding record undermines that.no 1 breeder of Gorillas Moloch Gibbons Javan Langurs Clouded Leopard De Brazza Monkey and many more more to many to mention here including the most successful breeding herd of African Ele in the UK so we are pretty good at what we do ..all good so far right?
Wrong.... over the years i started to realise how many species had been hybridised by zoos how many species carried diseases how many were inbred or genetically unviable etc which made all these species have absolutely no conservation value at all ! the amount of zoos that had just stopped breeding animals as nobody wanted them honestly the list just goes on. Then i studied how many of the species were indeed actually critically endangered and found out of the 45 species in zoos only a tiny handful are viable the rest are the above ... so what have we been doing over the years what has been the point of the billions invested into zoos where has that got us?
 
(Adsa) said:
Personally I feel education should be brought up. Seeing animals in person is without question the best way to learn about animals.
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Good point but there is no empirical evidence that substantiates this argument and more importantly it is not ok in todays age that we lock up animals so a very few people may educate themselves is that fair on the hundreds of thousands of animals in zoos?
 
Stepping into the thread briefly to note that it would be remiss of me not to highlight the inaccuracy of the following statement:

Damian Aspinall said:
I know more than probably anyone on this thread about the truth about zoos (I say this as obviously i don't who everyone is as they don't say) but even so i doubt anyone has the knowledge or experience that i have.
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Given one of the individuals who has directly replied to you is Carl Jones - and openly so, given his username - it is rather unfair at best to make such sweeping statements methinks?

On another note, I am genuinely curious to hear which of the critically endangered mammal species in captivity you regard as comprising hybridised stock - looking through the list of CE mammals in Europe myself I cannot find any species which are known to comprise hybrid stock at all - and which are the small handful you view as worthwhile.

Stepping out again to keep an eye on proceedings and clean up anything unhelpful :)
 
Damian Aspinall said:
Then i studied how many of the species were indeed actually critically endangered and found out of the 45 species in zoos only a tiny handful are viable
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Oh, one last point before I step out - there are rather more than 45 species in zoos which are classified as Endangered or Vulnerable, and these still count as species which are threatened even if they don't have the CE status.... so I think your 95% figure for species of no conservation significance may be a little too high?
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Stepping into the thread briefly to note that it would be remiss of me not to highlight the inaccuracy of the following statement:



Given one of the individuals who has directly replied to you is Carl Jones - and openly so, given his username - it is rather unfair at best to make such sweeping statements methinks?

On another note, I am genuinely curious to hear which of the critically endangered mammal species in captivity you regard as comprising hybridised stock - looking through the list of CE mammals in Europe myself I cannot find any species which are known to comprise hybrid stock at all - and which are the small handful you view as worthwhile.

Stepping out again to keep an eye on proceedings and clean up anything unhelpful :)
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Of the 45 critically endangered species we could only identify Gorillas Black Rhino orang-utan from memory there were a couple more but don't have to hand. For any up to date information on this study we did reach out to Amos Courage at Port Lympne he can fill you in with all the details and I urge you to do that .I do not believe anyone else had bothered to look at this like we have
The rest were either hybrids diseased inbred or genetically unviable ...
i appreciate Carl Jones is commenting however most are not saying who they are so not really a sweeping statement me thinks :)
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Oh, one last point before I step out - there are rather more than 45 species in zoos which are classified as Endangered or Vulnerable, and these still count as species which are threatened even if they don't have the CE status.... so I think your 95% figure for species of no conservation significance may be a little too high?
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45 Critically endangered
 
Damian Aspinall said:
Good point but there is no empirical evidence that substantiates this argument and more importantly it is not ok in todays age that we lock up animals so a very few people may educate themselves is that fair on the hundreds of thousands of animals in zoos?
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You are wrong. There is lots of studies which show that zoos are effective in educating people and people care about conservation.

Here is a link to (one of many!) articles. In this case, people seeing a polar bear training session in a zoo became more interested in conservation, but people seeing the same on television did not.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.21565

If you checked the literature you would find many such articles, where zoos actually want to know what comes of these education programs they put and how to eventually make them better.

You are also wrong in your opinion that 'very few people' educate themselves in zoos. Zoos are visited by hundreds of millions people worldwide (a fact which is easy to check if you actually tried), and much more than ever see wild animals in the wild. Even in Africa and Asia more people nowadays see the iconic local megafauna in local zoos than in national parks.

You are also very much understating the number of endangered species held in zoos, but here anybody can check zootierliste and correct you.

I only suspect you may have formed your opinion about zoos 30 years ago and did not bother to notice that zoos changed.
 
Damian Aspinall said:
The key question is prove me wrong which absolutely no one has been able to do no one has come up with a valid reason that justifies zoos and all the thousand of species held by them. People have suggested there own emotive thoughts and ideas but that is not evidence that justifies them.
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Not. People very patiently keep giving you reasons but you simply ignore them. You are also unwilling to check in the internet for objective papers which show the value of zoos for education and wild conservation.

You are also mis-interpreting 'all the thousands of species' held in zoos. By sheer number of species, most are invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, rodents and rescued local animals, for which your arguments of lack of space and great emotional needs don't apply. For large mammals and large birds, there are only several hundred of species kept (excluding local rescues) and large proportion of individuals belong to threatened species.

You also seem to mis-understand that budgets of zoos worldwide could go directly for conservation. It is a so-called fallacy of fixed lump of conservation money. Zoo budget comes from the money city people spend for recreation. If there were no zoos, none would be spend on conservation, because the money would be spent on shopping malls, theme parks, sport centers etc.
 
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Jurek7 said:
You are also mis-interpreting 'all the thousands of species' held in zoos. By sheer number of species, most are invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, rodents and rescued local animals, for which your arguments of lack of space and great emotional needs don't apply. For large mammals and large birds, there are only several hundred of species kept (excluding local rescues) and large proportion of individuals belong to threatened species.
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Right, but lets not skip over the fact that large mammals and particularly African and Asian megafauna (many of which belong to species that are not threatened) would count for an outsized portion of zoo mammals.
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
I think we need to avoid partisanship in this debate and try to find the common / middle ground.
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But there is no point in this thread if one half of the debate will not find a common ground. Its just one guy saying his beliefs with no real evidence to back any of it up and even when given proof of the value of zoos he just states "I believe it could be done in-situ" but does not explain how this would be funded, as has been asked time and time again.

I think most here will agree zoos can and should do more and that there is a balance between in-situ and ex-situ to be met but Damian doesn't think or believe this, he just wants them shut down because he feels animals suffer. So why are we continuing this?
 
Jurek7 said:
You are wrong. There is lots of studies which show that zoos are effective in educating people and people care about conservation.

Here is a link to (one of many!) articles. In this case, people seeing a polar bear training session in a zoo became more interested in conservation, but people seeing the same on television did not.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.21565

If you checked the literature you would find many such articles, where zoos actually want to know what comes of these education programs they put and how to eventually make them better.
Click to expand...

It is a very nuanced topic and again things are much more complex.

There have been both studies that show some zoos have a demonstrable impact on meeting environmental education targets with the general public and studies that show that a good many zoos do not effectively meet these targets.

The literature actually reveals a far more mixed picture of the educational role of these institutions and their impact on conservation outreach.
 
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