@ gentle lemur:
Unfortunately the situation is not as easy as You wrote. Certainly this lobby was happened, and may I make some details know. The Veszprem Zoo tried to purchuse a female for their single male in 2005. As the single male at Veszprem is a genetical valuable individual, the former Dutch EEP coordinator of the Eurasian Otter wanted to participated him in the EEP, and offered that there was an appropriate female for him at Zoo Krakow. The Conservancy refused this for the first time the reason of genetical problems and unknown diseases. After that the zoo could refute these reasons with experts in its appeal, secondly they simply said that the breeding of otters is not a ’common weal’ or ’public interest’. This situation was so incomprehensible on international level, so the coordinator offered a new female, but nothing has changed.
The main problem is the following: there were several zoos in my country which exhibited this native predator species (which is pretty good I think), but after this meaningless ministerial act more and more Hungarian zoos changed to keeping other otter species, so currently zoos there are full of Oriental small-clawed otters instead their native relatives, so zoos can’t use the possibility the conservational and educational value connecting with one of our acutely protected native species, which is so regrettable I think.
Thanks for the info.