Are major zoos on a decline? I feel that since animal rights activism is wrongly starting to gain traction, zoos will start being more... "correct" in order to fit these demands. The banning of cetaceans seems to prove my anxieties correct, as I believe that this is a VERY slippery slope.
You're not the first person to share these sentiments on the forum; regardless of regional differences or likelihood of becoming reality, the anxiety is clearly there for several of our members.
I will only speak to the situation here in the US, as I understand that the situation may be quite different in other countries. I see very little evidence of major zoos "declining" in most senses of the word. As
@Aardwolf and
@Jurek7 pointed out, most zoos have climbing attendance numbers and do not (on the surface) appear to be in troubling financial straits, even in a post-COVID environment where maybe they'd be expected to. People who strongly take issue with zoos are a vocal minority; the numbers suggest that a majority of Americans are supportive or at least tolerant of zoos. Enclosures are constantly being improved. There have been isolated legal cases that have caused concern for zoos' ability to keep and care for certain animals, but at least as it stands now I'm not aware of any serious threat that has been posed to zoos from the courts.
Cetaceans in captivity is not a practice that has been banned in the United States; at the state level, I believe only two states (California and South Carolina) have any sort of severe restrictions on captive cetaceans, the latter of which was passed decades ago. Both cetaceans and elephants have become less widespread in captivity here as some places modernize their holding spaces and husbandry practices, while others choose to simply forgo them and focus on smaller species. This honestly seems more like a positive trend than a troubling one to me. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence whatsoever that the practice of American zoos keeping any kind of primate, carnivore, or other species currently in captivity is under threat.
Even if cetaceans were potentially banned, that's not inevitably a "slippery slope". It could be the first step on the road to zoos disappearing forever... or it could be the end and nothing else happens. Not every situation is opening the floodgate to more extreme outcomes.
Sadly, the diversity of species kept is in decline - zoos tend to collectively keep a limited number of species with breeding plans.
This is the only angle from which I could see a legitimate argument for major zoos "declining", and I've spoken at length before about why I think the situation is more complicated than some members imply it to be. Basic gist: shifting focus to sustainable populations was always going to necessitate a drop in diversity, and while I wish as much as the next ZooChatter that fewer species were being dropped off the radar in favor of more lions and giraffes, I'm not wholly convinced that the issue is as bad as some make it out to be nor that we haven't gotten some positive tradeoffs in exchange. People on this forum also may have an unrepresentative sense of what a "diverse" collection is because we have a lot of knowledge about animal diversity and past collection sizes. To some people, pygmy hippos, fossa, and rhinceros hornbills are cool and rare animals to see while many of us strive for the last oncillas, mountain anoas and yellow-casqued hornbills.
