Real Zoo Conservation Projects

[jayjds2]

Old thread but Saint Louis Zoo released its herd of Mountain Bongo into the wild.

 

[Chlidonias]

Old thread but Saint Louis Zoo released its herd of Mountain Bongo into the wild.

the bongo exported to Africa came from a number of organisations:
Zoo Sends Bongos to Homeland :: Saint Louis Zoo

....Eighteen captive-bred bongos, including two females bred at the Saint Louis Zoo, were flown to a wildlife preserve in Kenya on January 28, 2004, where they will live and breed.....

The organizations contributing animals for repatriation include: Busch Gardens Tampa; Disney’s Animal Kingdom; Houston Zoo; Cape May County Zoo, New Jersey; International Animal Exchange, Michigan; Jacksonville Zoo, Florida; Los Angeles Zoo; Peace River Refuge, Florida; Rare Species Conservatory Foundation, Florida; San Diego Zoo; St. Louis Zoo; Virginia Zoological Park; and White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida. Initial seed funding for the project was provided by the Donner Canadian Foundation.

Partners in the Mountain Bongo Reintroduction program include: Rare Species Conservatory Foundation, United Nations Development Program, United Nations Foundation, Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, Kenya Wildlife Service, William Holden Foundation, and 13 U.S. Zoos and conservation oganizations.

None of these animals were to be released - they were founders for breeding a herd in captivity on site for later release: Mountain bongo faces extinction after more than a century of decline - Scientific American Blog Network

However as far as I can tell no bongo have yet been released due to local and not-so local politics.

 

[jayjds2]

Ok, thanks. I didn't know much about the transfer, I just remember signs near the bongo enclosure that said something about releasing them (which apparently didn't happen).

 

[TheMightyOrca]

The Houston Zoo does breeding and release for species like the Houston toad and Attwater's prairie chicken. They also established a frog conservation center in Panama.

I think the Clearwater Aquarium started a vaquita awareness campaign a while back, but I don't know how much they've done with it.

 

[temp]

By now the majority of medium or large well-established zoo (i.e., excluding roadside zoos and alike) in Europe and North America are directly involved in one or more conservation projects, both in-situ and ex-situ. I'm less familiar with the situation in Australian and NZ zoos but suspect it's comparable. Attempting to list all, or "just" most, would be a massive undertaking!

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

I know Disney does do film documentaries on endangered species such as Africa's big cats and Common Chimpanzees but do they do anything else?

Thanks

~Thylo

I know you posted this a long time ago but I thought I'd answer your question (though I have a feeling you've probably already learned this in the years since you posted it) on what Disney does for conservation.

There is a Disney fund for nature conservation which offers very generous grants to NGO's and conservation projects that are working directly with endangered and critically endangered species. These grants obviously help a great deal in assisting projects to achieve their conservation goals and they are in many cases literally a lifeline in times of urgency.

Here in Brazil for example, the Disney fund for nature conservation has really consistently helped long-term conservation projects such as those with the black lion tamarin and the golden lion tamarin and the same can be said in Colombia with the conservation of the cotton top tamarin.

I say all this as someone who isn't into Disney, their films or Disneyland at all (just not my thing tbh but to each their own) but who really admires the contributions that they have made to achieving effective conservation of callitrichids here in Latin America.