5 things we need to stop telling ourselves about zoos

sooty mangabey said:
Much as I loved GD, this statement, and variations of it from Attenborough, too many zoo staff, and a surprising number on Zoochat, really makes me want to reach for the sick bag.

I enjoy seeing wild animals, and I have also enjoyed looking after wild animals. I don't think I am alone in that. If the animals do not suffer by being kept in captivity, then that is enough. Yes, conservation matters, of course it does, but it is not what it is all about, in my opinion.
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Does anyone know the actual quote of what Gerald Durrell said/wrote?

I tend to think that he meant it not as "no zoos at all" but rather more in the vein of "I would like to live in a time where zoos were not needed for saving endangered species because they were safe in the wild."

I'm with Sooty and Paradoxurus on this one. I like zoos, I like seeing animals, and I particularly like seeing animals I will never see in the wild. I don't like bad zoos.
 
sooty mangabey said:
Much as I loved GD, this statement, and variations of it from Attenborough, too many zoo staff, and a surprising number on Zoochat, really makes me want to reach for the sick bag.

I enjoy seeing wild animals, and I have also enjoyed looking after wild animals. I don't think I am alone in that. If the animals do not suffer by being kept in captivity, then that is enough. Yes, conservation matters, of course it does, but it is not what it is all about, in my opinion.
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I completely agree with you. Conservation and education do matter, but for me, like you said, it is not what it is all about. If an animal can live a good life in captivity, if it can display its natural behaviour and experiences no unnecessary stress, it is enough for me.

I do think, in an ideal world, zoos like they exist now shouldn't exist.
I personally don't know in what form they should exist, but zoos evolve,
and they are getting closer and closer to ideal zoos.
They might never reach it, but I am sure they will get very close to those ideal zoos. But for them to reach that, we need to support them.
I will, and I am sure many of you will too.
 
It's because of humans that zoos are necessary. Zoos have increased animal populations that humans have caused to decrease. My local zoo is responsible from both bringing animals back from being extinct in the wild as well as preventing species from going extinct. They took the last remaining 9 Arabian Oryx and have had more than 200 born to that herd and have helped establish other breeding programs.

Are all zoos perfect? No. Do I wish they weren't necessary? Absolutely. I've been fortunate to see both land and marine mammals in the wild and in captivity and there's nothing more awesome than seeing them in the wild, but if it wasn't for zoos, there would be a lot more animals extinct and that's unacceptable.

Maybe the city-owned and some of the privately-owned zoos are in it for profit. Why else would they keep normally solitary animals in male/female pairs to encourage mating so they can put the babies in a nursery and encourage people to come see them? But there are quite a few good zoos that are non-profit and all of the revenue generated from admission, gift shop and food sales go to feed and care for the animals. Case in point...Almost two weeks ago a huge storm blew through here and my local zoo suffered damage to a bunch of trees and some exhibit fencing. They stayed closed for 3 days following the storm even though they knew it would cost them a lot of money in lost revenue so they could ensure proper clean-up and ensure both the animals and guests were safe. If they didn't care, they would've opened as usual the next day and work around the fallen trees. If they didn't care about the animals and their well-being they wouldn't be willing to spend millions of dollars building larger exhibits that mimic their natural habitat more closely.

Again, though, there's good facilities and there's some bad ones and I wish we could do away with the bad ones.
 
Chlidonias said:
Does anyone know the actual quote of what Gerald Durrell said/wrote?

I tend to think that he meant it not as "no zoos at all" but rather more in the vein of "I would like to live in a time where zoos were not needed for saving endangered species because they were safe in the wild."
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Yes, after his incredible life's work it does seem a tad hypocritical otherwise! Having said that he is very scathing about a lot of zoos in The Stationary Ark, although that was written before a lot of them adopted his conservation based model.
 
Aside:
I was going to frame the above post in terms of how Durrell used to conduct the kind of mass collection expeditions that wouldn't be considered acceptable today. However, thinking about that got quite complicated quite quickly. Imports from the wild of both endangered and common species still happen frequently (is my understanding), although I think zoos deliberately underplay this publically. I don't think though, that we will ever see a ship full of animals arrive in Europe again. I think perhaps it is the targeted approach vs 'let's see what we get'. Which in many ways was Durrell's own evolution. There is also the issue of having to care for many animals on a sea voyage rather than a few on a plane journey.
Just a few ranbling thoughts, but they often seem to throw up interesting things on ZC.
 
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