Collecting trips.

Many zoos obtained animals from the wild or through dealers. Gerald Durrld Durrell and David Attenborough travelled to many locations to obtain animals. Many years ago, I met John and George Newmark who collected small animals for London Zoo and wrote 'To the Zoo in a Plastic Box'. Unfortunately, some animals didn't survive long, as the keepers didn't know much about some of the species or how to keep them.

The International Zoo Yearbook had details of various animal dealers. Unfortunately, some dealers obtained animals by killing the parents and some animals were kept in poor conditions. This still occurs today.

I can understand some collecting expeditions. Gerald Durrell's last collecting trip was to Madagascar and he collected animals from forests that were to be destroyed. I can understand this philosophy, as the rescued animals had a chance of survival in zoos, rather than perhaps dying after their habitat was destroyed.

I don't agree with people taking animals from the wild for exotic pets, of people who don't know how to look after them, or as temporary exhibits in poor zoos.
 
I don't agree with people taking animals from the wild for exotic pets, of people who don't know how to look after them, or as temporary exhibits in poor zoos.

@ Dassie rat, what if the collecting is done in a sustainable way that it does not have a negative effect on the local population and the caught animals provide the local community with a source of income.
(I do understand that these conditions will be very difficult to uphold)
 
A very interesting thread. There are still zoos/animal parks in the UK that have got stock from game reserves in Africa. The initial rhinos at South Lakes spring to mind but I am sure there are others.
 
There have been actually some imports of Southern White Rhinos last year. 2 Animals went to Tbilisi Zoo, but there have been some more imports from South African Game reserves.
 
@ Dassie rat, what if the collecting is done in a sustainable way that it does not have a negative effect on the local population and the caught animals provide the local community with a source of income.
(I do understand that these conditions will be very difficult to uphold)

Hallo DDCorvus

I agree with London Zoo obtaining butterfly pupae from tropical butterfly farms. This provides money for local people and encourages them to keep the forests intact, rather than making short-term gains from selling off the forest to loggers.

As regards the pet industry, a local pet shop had a poster that complained about threats to the exotic pet trade. While I can understand that animals could be bred in the wild and that some of these could be sold to provide money to protect wild habitats, I doubt if there would be much control. I've read about parrots being placed in cardboard tubes and of torotoises being packed into cardboard boxes for the pet trade. The animals at the bottom tend to die from being crushed or suffocated. On a moral basis, I can't agree with treating animals like this.
 

Hallo DDCorvus

I agree with London Zoo obtaining butterfly pupae from tropical butterfly farms. This provides money for local people and encourages them to keep the forests intact, rather than making short-term gains from selling off the forest to loggers.

As regards the pet industry, a local pet shop had a poster that complained about threats to the exotic pet trade. While I can understand that animals could be bred in the wild and that some of these could be sold to provide money to protect wild habitats, I doubt if there would be much control. I've read about parrots being placed in cardboard tubes and of torotoises being packed into cardboard boxes for the pet trade. The animals at the bottom tend to die from being crushed or suffocated. On a moral basis, I can't agree with treating animals like this.

I agree with you that the last is unacceptable. I am against wild-caught animals and in most species this is also totally unnescessary as there is more then sufficient captive-bred stock. Also smuggling animals in horrible condition is still going on and if even countries like Australia and New Zealand cannot prevent it how can we expect some African of South American ones to uphold certain standards.

To counter this I have seen "collectors" doing a very professional job knowing the species they are working with and transporting them under good conditions. It were also these people often providing a much needed income to communities that are struggling and are living in bad conditions themselves. Unfortunately there are too many rotten apples.
 


As regards the pet industry, a local pet shop had a poster that complained about threats to the exotic pet trade. While I can understand that animals could be bred in the wild and that some of these could be sold to provide money to protect wild habitats, I doubt if there would be much control. I've read about parrots being placed in cardboard tubes and of torotoises being packed into cardboard boxes for the pet trade. The animals at the bottom tend to die from being crushed or suffocated. On a moral basis, I can't agree with treating animals like this.

I have looked into getting some exotics such as frogs or reptiles but found it very hard to find out the exact background of the animals. When the backgrounds were given on a website I looked at many were either wild caught (WC) or captive bread (CB) but imported from Asia. The commonly kept species such as leopard geckos, bearded dragons, lots of snakes and fire-bellied toads can be bred in the UK so these are the species I would consider although I would have liked something more unusual and exotic. I wouldn't knowingly purchase any animal that was WC or imported. Best is British in my eyes :D
 
Hallo DDCorvus

Thanks for your reply.

I agree there are good collectors and I also accept that some animals should be collected from the wild to provide captive populations to save the species, especially those that are critically endangered and living in habitat that is rapidly being destroyed. The collectors need to know what they're doing and how to ensure that the animals are looked after properly. There should be special care taken of transportation and the choice of zoos to keep the species. I wouldn't want a repeat of the situation where a high proprtion of wild-caught Sumatran rhinos dies soon afterwards.

Care much be taken at each stage and the welfare of the animals must be paramount.
 
Many zoos obtained animals from the wild or through dealers. Gerald Durrld Durrell and David Attenborough travelled to many locations to obtain animals.

Gerald Durrell did make several animal collecting trips, and these formed the basis of the very early Jersey Zoo. But I don't think David Attenborough ever collected animals- but he was gifted occassional specimens which were then donated to a Zoo- usually ZSL I believe.
 
I believe Sir David Attenborough took part in the early TV series Zoo Quest where they went of to collect specimens for London Zoo. I think he was not really the collector more the presenter of the expeditions.
 
In the BBC series on Madagascar broadcasted last year Sir David Attenborough specifically mention that in the his early days as a presenter he also collected animals for London Zoo. If I remember correctly he even says that collecting was part of the tasks they had when making a documentary abroad.
 
He also collected or his private collection whilst on the zoo collecting trips, including parrots and galagos.
 
I think most of the freshwater fishes imported into the UK are farm bred.

If talking about most of the 'standard species' that are sold in huge quantities like freshwater angelfish, yes farm bred, typically in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia. 'Medium quantity fish' like some species of Corydoras and many Malawi cichlids are often captive bred by private breeders or small-scale professional breeders in the near-region (for Britain, within Britain itself or in other European countries). But many fish species that only sell in smaller quantities are wild caught. New varieties of cichlids enter the British aquarium market regularly and these are typically wild caught. Most Loricariidae catfish species have rarely, if ever, been captive bred and are typically wild caught (there are exceptions, but only involving a handful of species). Sadly some of the red line torpedo barb seen in the aquarium trade are wild caught, despite attemps of various aquarium organisations to convinced shops to only sell captive bred of this threatened species.

Reptiles, amphibians and non-parrot birds can be compared to freshwater fish in this respect. Have people wondered why smaller non-parrot South American birds kept in zoos mostly are species that are common in the Guianas region? That's because Guyana and Suriname, two of the smallest countries in South America, are the primary exporters of South American wildlife. Sure, tanagers, cotingas and trogons have been bred in captivity, but not with any regularity and in small quantities. In these groups, only some Thraupis (e.g. blue-gray tanager) and Ramphocelus (e.g. Brazilian tanager) are bred regularly in relatively large quantities. Even among parrots relatively large quantities are exported every year. I am not talking about the horrible tube packed parrots that we all have seen on photos (these are illegal, obviously, and attemps of hiding them from customs), but legal exports in cages under controlled conditions. Some are allowed to be exported under CITES each year and many of these originate from the wild. For example 4000 African gray parrots from D.R. Congo, several thousand of a wide range of parrot species from Guyana and Suriname, and in total thousands from various other countries in 2011 alone: CITES Export quotas. Additionally, only a relatively small number of species are listed by CITES. Most are not listed at all. Let's say I captured a wild ethiopian wolf and a spoon-billed sandpiper, both for export to some rich animal collector. There are local laws that would prohibit this, but nothing in CITES would prevent it because neither of these very rare species are listed. Here is the complete CITES list. CITES is mostly useful for famous animals and many CITES decisions are more about politics than the actual status of the animal. Imports of wild caught birds has now been greatly limited in EU and USA, but mainly because of local rules (some implemented in connection to the 2006 bird flu scare), not CITES. Most fish, reptile and amphibian species can be imported to EU without any legal limits, as long as they adhere to quarantine rules.

But to get back on subject of wild caught animals in zoos, this is still the case, as already has been noted by a few other posters. Actual collecting trips by zoos are almost completely a thing of the past. Not because wild caught animals have disappeared completely from zoos (except almost entirely in mammals), but because professional local companies that specialise in catching, legal requirements and exporting do the job. That's probably better than zoos trying to do it themselves. Zookeepers might know how to care for the animal in captivity, but generally they're unlikely to have much experiance with safely catching it in the wild, whether it is a cotinga (bird) that lives in the forest canopy or a sawfish. That is, of course, only if people accept wild caught happens at all, but you'll be hard pressed to find any public aquarium or a zoo with large collection of reptiles, amphibians, fish or birds without any wild caught. My general feeling about this is reflected in the last part of the post under the "this is still the case" link.
 
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Pertinax said:
Gerald Durrell did make several animal collecting trips, and these formed the basis of the very early Jersey Zoo. But I don't think David Attenborough ever collected animals- but he was gifted occassional specimens which were then donated to a Zoo- usually ZSL I believe.
Attenborough started out as a collector for the London Zoo. As noted by others this was the basis for the ZooQuest tv series (and accompanying books) to several parts of the world. He only became the presenter of the show because the person who was going to present got sick (and almost died I recall; I think it may have been Jack Lester? - I can't remember exactly). The tv show was part on-location filming of the capture and then live segments in the studio of those same animals. They were available to watch on the BBC site a while ago (not sure if that's still the case) and they are very interesting. He also had his own private collection of pets as well, including a ring-tailed lemur he obtained in Madagascar.

Attenborough then moved in to the management side of television (was instrumental in bring colour tv to Britain apparently), but wanted to get back in the field so created "Life On Earth" and the rest is history.

(That's all off the top of my head, so there may be a few minor details wrong)
 
Wow condor thanks for the links! Absolutely fascinating!

I couldn't quite belive some of the legal quotas of animals in the cites link! Tens of thousands are the quota for some species wildcaught.

If that's the legal quota imagine the number of all the unprotected fish and reptile species sold per year...
I always have and always will try to avoid keeping wild caught animals especialy where there are thousands captive bred every year such as the royal pythons.
 
Gerald Durrell did make several animal collecting trips, and these formed the basis of the very early Jersey Zoo. But I don't think David Attenborough ever collected animals- but he was gifted occassional specimens which were then donated to a Zoo- usually ZSL I believe.

As a young man, David Attenborough was indeed an animal-collector for zoos, or, to be more correct, for one zoo in particular, the London Zoo. Indeed, he and Gerald Durrell first met up when both, coincidentally, were on (separate) animal-collecting expeditions to Paraguay in the mid 1950s. Top of the "wanted" list for both men was a Giant armadillo, and each wanted to outdo the other by being the first to obtain one. Neither succeeded. Attenborough was chiefly interested in filming, however. These "Zoo Quest" programmes, as they were known, showed him capturing the animal and looking after it, and then cutting to show that same animal in the TV studio in London. As well as Paraguay, Attenborough collected animals in Sierra Leone, Guyana (then British Guiana), Madagascar, and Indonesia. Another series under the "Quest" title took place in Australia, but I don't believe any collecting was done on that expedition.
 
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