Zootierliste America

Animal said:
2.) Please write on the notice board if a species has to be removed from a collection permanently.
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I have accrued a lot of notes researching Rodents in North American facilities which led me to a lot of inaccuracies with ZTL. I'm wondering when I go on the Notice Board, is there a daily cap on how many messages I can add? And to add further to this, should I go by facility or by species when writing the posts?
 
Smaggledagle said:
I have accrued a lot of notes researching Rodents in North American facilities which led me to a lot of inaccuracies with ZTL. I'm wondering when I go on the Notice Board, is there a daily cap on how many messages I can add? And to add further to this, should I go by facility or by species when writing the posts?
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If a facility is a former holder you can switch it to former without using the notice board. It would be nice if you back up your points with a source.
 
Smaggledagle said:
I have accrued a lot of notes researching Rodents in North American facilities which led me to a lot of inaccuracies with ZTL. I'm wondering when I go on the Notice Board, is there a daily cap on how many messages I can add? And to add further to this, should I go by facility or by species when writing the posts?
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You can also message me here directly :)
 
I have an important note to bring up to anyone editing the US entries: please do more research before switching species from current to former. Lots of species entries have been moved from current to former because someone visited one time and the animal wasn't signed or seen, or because one USDA report didn't list them, or because they are no longer listed on the website. *A single one of these occurring is not sufficient to declare something gone*. Animals can be moved off-display but still be present; zoos can temporarily lapse out of a species while waiting for replacement animals; USDA reports make mistakes; websites change their formatting; et cetera.

Ideally there should either be direct confirmation from the zoo or multiple sources indicating the absence of a species before switching it to former - especially if it's a species that has been documented there recently (i.e. within the last couple years at least).
 
More housekeeping notes!

1. When making entries based on visits, please use the correct wording. A lot of people have simply put a date ("July 21, 2023.") with no other context; this does not make it clear to other people that it was a visit where the animal was present.
Also please include - when possible - whether or not you saw the animal, and whether or not there was signage for the animal.
The standard format for European entries is shown below. It is a concise way of including all the relevant information; ideally you should use this format or something very similar, but just make sure to include this information.

Visit [Month/Year] ([seen/not seen],[signed/not signed]
Example: Visit 08/2023 (seen, signed)

2. When making an entry based on a visit, make sure to place it in proper order relative to the time of other visits and the presence of other sources. Visit entries should always be grouped together for clear reading, and in order of when they happened. So for example this:

Visit 08/2023 (seen, signed)
Visit 10/2024 (seen, signed)
---
Listed on zoo website
News article

Not this:

Visit 10/2024 (seen, signed)
Listed on zoo website
Visit 08/2023 (seen, signed)
News article

These points might seem nitpicky to people, but trust me - it makes it much easier to read and interpret when the correct wording is used and everything is in the right order.
 
Also a reminder to everybody: when you have the time, enter info from your zoo visits in Zootierliste! In general it seems like there was a flood of people making entries based on visits when the option first became available last year, and since then new visit entries have been extremely sporadic. I just noticed today that the Franklin Park Zoo wasn't listed for Painted Dogs, a high-profile species they acquired two years ago. I know there are people who have visited that zoo in the past two years, but nobody seems to have noticed the gap.

You don't have to do it for every single zoo or visit - I understand people are busy and have lives - but if you have the time and see that it's been a while since entries from the zoo have been updated, giving them a go-through would be very helpful for everyone :)
 
I'm still fairly inexperienced with Zootierliste and seem to only be a 'viewing member'. I did want to ask ahead, is there a particular procedure for adding former species to the catalogue or is it the same as adding current? Are there any different standards for records for older visits?
 
JVM said:
is there a particular procedure for adding former species to the catalogue or is it the same as adding current? Are there any different standards for records for older visits?
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A ZTL admin or more experienced user can step in and correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that it's more or less the same. When you're editing, you can either add it directly to former holdings (by having ZTL set to "Former") or you can add it to current and then just switch it. Sources and formatting works the same way.

This is a perfect segue into something else I wanted to bring up today: when a zoo phased out a species recently and you switch it to former, please include: 1) a source for why it is now former, and 2) the last year it was held (so right now would be "until 2025"). Someone switched sun bear at Racine Zoo to former - which was correct - but declined to provide any source or reason in their edits as to why, which is necessary to avoid confusion when there are sources from the last couple years showing them having the species.

Another thing to note: keep in mind what each box is for. Top box is for general information - holding dates for the species (since 2019, 2014-2024, until 2025, etc.), if they breed, year of first breeding, subspecies info, etc. Middle box is for specific holding information - transfers, births and deaths, holding numbers, etc. Third box is for sources - visit date, URLs for online sources, etc.
 
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