Are there any Galapagos species besides tortoises in zoos?

Ituri said:
Really? Because I can only find info about lending their expertise to design and implement an invasive species mitigation program. Nowhere can I find information stating that hawks were imported to the US, nor does that really make sense in context of what is known.



History
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Great Argus said:
I doubt that's actually true. I think @Ituri's information about them working to help conserve the hawks on the islands is correct. I can't imagine Ecuador allowing export of 20 Galapagos hawks, especially for only a few months/years before returning them.
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Chlidonias said:
I'm guessing that @birdsandbats has read this article (or a similar one) and completely misunderstood it: Raptor Center will round up about 20 Galapagos hawks | MinnPost
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I have read that article - however that's not where I got the information from. I never saw them there but last time I was there they had photos of a flock of Galapagos Hawks there at the center. I asked a keeper and they confirmed that yes, there were kept there.
 
ZTL lists Galapagos land iguanas living at Frankfurt and Zurich in the 1960s and London in 1902. I wonder if the 1960s arrivals came in 1964 with the marine iguanas.
 
ZTL lists red-footed boobies in Hamburg (@ 1902-28), London (1883, 1885, 1945-61), Paris Menagerie and Walsrode (1999-2002) and a flightless cormorant at London (1932).
 
Dassie rat said:
ZTL lists marine iguanas at Belle Vue (25 June-6 September 1964), Berlin Zoo (1964), Frankfurt (1960-62), Jersey (1964), London (1932-4).

I wonder how three zoos all had marine iguanas in 1964.
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There were Marine Iguanas kept in multiple zoos in the 1960s (in Europe and America) because collectors could legally export animals from the Galapagos at that time.
 
birdsandbats said:
I have read that article - however that's not where I got the information from. I never saw them there but last time I was there they had photos of a flock of Galapagos Hawks there at the center. I asked a keeper and they confirmed that yes, there were kept there.
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That seems extremely unlikely. I would suggest that either you or the keeper misunderstood what the other was saying.

Edit: I checked the CITES database. No live Galapagos Hawks were exported or imported anywhere in the 2000s.
 
Dassie rat said:
ZTL lists marine iguanas at Belle Vue (25 June-6 September 1964), Berlin Zoo (1964), Frankfurt (1960-62), Jersey (1964), London (1932-4).

I wonder how three zoos all had marine iguanas in 1964.
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Probably not a coincidence, just individuals derived from the same import, specially considering all of the zoos mentioned above are fairly close to each other.
The trade and maintenance of the species around given time wasn't limited to Europe, however. Apparently some of them came from a trader in Florida, including four iguanas obtained by Brookfield Zoo, which I believe to be the institution with the most historical success at keeping them. The marine iguanas were stimulated to eat after a few days by sharing the enclosure with a green iguana, and as a result the last to die lived for over 6 years in the zoo.
In case any zoochatter has access to any of Ray Pawley's publications on Brookfield Zoo's marine iguanas, specially the ZSL's International Zoo Yearbook 6 (1966) one, and find some interesting information, please do share!
 
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Chlidonias said:
That seems extremely unlikely. I would suggest that either you or the keeper misunderstood what the other was saying.

Edit: I checked the CITES database. No live Galapagos Hawks were exported or imported anywhere in the 2000s.
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The raptor center's website concurs with this, there is no mention of any Galapagos Hawks arriving, only that they worked in the Galapagos to help with a rat eradication project.

Quoted from their accomplishments:
"Galapagos National Park, the Charles Darwin Foundation, and Island Conservation asked The Raptor Center to work with them to design and implement a mitigation plan to protect Galapagos hawks during a project to eradicate invasive rats on ten small islands in Galapagos."
 
Great Argus said:
The raptor center's website concurs with this, there is no mention of any Galapagos Hawks arriving, only that they worked in the Galapagos to help with a rat eradication project.

Quoted from their accomplishments:
"Galapagos National Park, the Charles Darwin Foundation, and Island Conservation asked The Raptor Center to work with them to design and implement a mitigation plan to protect Galapagos hawks during a project to eradicate invasive rats on ten small islands in Galapagos."
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All the details of the project are still viewable on the Raptor Center's old blog.

The Raptor Center

The project is described in posts that span from about October 2010 to March 2011. To summarize, the Galapagos Hawks were never in Minnesota; they were captured from the islands undergoing rat eradication and held in temporary aviaries constructed on Isla Santiago.
 
Xavier GM said:
That's a private collection if I'm correct, and possibly got the animals in an ilegal way. But I could be wrong, so correct me if I'm wrong.
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There's no "possibly" about it; the collection in question is owned by a known Swiss smuggler who - among other things - was convicted in 2010 of smuggling Jewelled Geckos out of New Zealand.
 
To put it simply, it will happen if the Ecuadorian government decides that it can happen.

If Quito were to grant permits for marine iguanas, or flightless cormorants, or what have you, to be legally exported, it would be possible for zoos to import. Marine iguanas are CITES II, which means that as long as an export permit would be issued, no CITES import permit would be required to bring them into the US. Right now, Ecuador has shown zero inclination to do so, but if there's one thing that should be evident, governments (and their priorities and willingness to stick with established customs) can be highly changeable.

It's similar to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park with the platypuses. The species was considered "impossible" to get because Australia wouldn't export any. Then, Canberra changed its mind (in part driven by a close working relationship with San Diego Zoo Global and Australian conservationists), and then they were allowed to import some
 
Aardwolf said:
To put it simply, it will happen if the Ecuadorian government decides that it can happen.

If Quito were to grant permits for marine iguanas, or flightless cormorants, or what have you, to be legally exported, it would be possible for zoos to import. Marine iguanas are CITES II, which means that as long as an export permit would be issued, no CITES import permit would be required to bring them into the US. Right now, Ecuador has shown zero inclination to do so, but if there's one thing that should be evident, governments (and their priorities and willingness to stick with established customs) can be highly changeable.

It's similar to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park with the platypuses. The species was considered "impossible" to get because Australia wouldn't export any. Then, Canberra changed its mind (in part driven by a close working relationship with San Diego Zoo Global and Australian conservationists), and then they were allowed to import some
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Just to ask, but do marine iguanas do well in captivity in the modern day? Australia had multiple institutions with the platypuses and had proven that it could be kept in a captive environment, only that the government had to approve that the animals went outside the country. Iguanas are very restricted, and with my understanding, don't do well on a captive environment in the modern day, so that's another thing to take in mind.
 
Xavier GM said:
Just to ask, but do marine iguanas do well in captivity in the modern day? Australia had multiple institutions with the platypuses and had proven that it could be kept in a captive environment, only that the government had to approve that the animals went outside the country. Iguanas are very restricted, and with my understanding, don't do well on a captive environment in the modern day, so that's another thing to take in mind.
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There have been trials in the past, without much success.
Nonetheless an Ugandan zoo (!) keeps this species for years ; the management of this park and the way it get its animals are controversial.

A Japanese zoo keeps and breeds Galapagos Land Iguanas.
 
Haliaeetus said:
There have been trials in the past, without much success.
Nonetheless an Ugandan zoo (!) keeps this species for years ; the management of this park and the way it get its animals are controversial.

A Japanese zoo keeps and breeds Galapagos Land Iguanas.
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While I know that the ugandan zoo has kept the animals for years that doesn't indicate that they have discover a way to keep the animals in captivity. In early days of zoos some animals survived and some died, but that didn't ment that the zoo knew how to keep them properly. I haven't seen the enclosure of the facility, but I'll guess that it isn't that good.
 
Haliaeetus said:
There have been trials in the past, without much success.
Nonetheless an Ugandan zoo (!) keeps this species for years ; the management of this park and the way it get its animals are controversial.

A Japanese zoo keeps and breeds Galapagos Land Iguanas.
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These land iguanas came from said Ugandan "zoo" and have the exact same illegal background
 
A fair question, and my answer? I am 100% certain that zoos could successfully keep marine iguanas in captivity. They've already done it, with some zoos having kept their animals for years, excluding our smuggler friends. Today, we have better technology, better transportation, a better understanding of the natural habitat and history of the species, better ability to mimic abiotic factors, better ability to recreate diet - I'm absolutely sure it could be done. There would be some trial and error, but that's how we got a lot of species, including platypus (or gorilla, for that matter) to go from "impossible to keep alive" to manageable, or in the case of some species, thriving.

Another thing to consider. Marine iguanas, in their wild state, are subject to mass die-offs due to El Nino years. In some years up to 90% of the population may crash. When I was in the Galapagos I saw thousands of marine iguanas - but there were also parts of the trip where I was literally walking on a carpet of desiccated iguana carcasses. Knowing this, marine iguanas could be collected from the wild in a perfectly sustainable manner at the onset of El Nino years, secure in the knowledge that they were probably going to die anyway of starvation, and therefore their removal likely would not be detrimental at all to the wild population.
 
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