I have just read through all the posts on the red river hog cull at Edinburgh Zoo and most of the points that support the actions of the zoo have been made, except one that may have been mentioned in one message, but certainly warrants further discussion.
For those who contributed their thoughts on the subject and were of the opinion that it was completely inappropriate of the zoo to make such a decision, do they honestly think that this was an easy decision for the staff, at whatever level? Do they think that if there really were alternate avenues that would not compromise the welfare of the individual animals or the breeding programme that they would not have been explored? Do they think that those zoos that maintain a holier than thou attitude when it comes to euthanasia and stop their animals from breeding, which stifles behaviour and increasingly makes females sick, and then goes to ludicrous lengths to keep geriatric animals alive at all costs, which is highly questionable on pure animal welfare grounds, is actually more moral than a collection like Edinburgh that lives up to the high ideals of population management and is prepared to make what are unquestionably hard and as we have seen, unpopular decisions?
It is collections like Edinburgh and Copenhagen and bold staff like those at Magdeburg that are paving the way forward and demonstrating how captive populations need to be managed if they are to be viable long term. The reactions of elements of the animal welfare community are to be expected, but we should have been at a point where the issue of culling of individuals within zoo populations for perfectly legitimate and justifiable reasons would generate the same minimal media backlash as an annual cull of a species within a national park or game reserve.
The red river hog youngsters had names, but then so do the milk cows on many dairy farms. The staff at the zoo were thrilled by the birth and rearing of the young hogs, which is understandable as it verifies that their husbandry was correct. If, for arguments sake, it was always going to be the intention to euthanase them, would it have been better for the zoo not to have been so publicly proud of the birth and for the babies to have been referred to by their animal records number rather than a name?
My point is that it does not take an enormous leap of faith given all that has happened in recent days that Edinburgh Zoo made what they believed to be the informed choice, and given the demonstrated interest and understanding of zoos and the people who work in them by most on this forum, that this decision, because of its difficult nature, was almost definitely hard for all the staff at Edinburgh.
The difficult decisions are never easy, and neither should they be, but they are often the correct ones. I believe that the people who made the decision to cull the red river hogs probably hated having to do it, but understood why it was the correct thing to do. The least that the rest of us looking in from the outside can do is give them the benefit of the doubt and respect them for having the professionalism to do what they did.
