Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Me too, I know @TheMightyOrca is from Texas but good grief that's a bit much don't you think?
They should be shot.....with water pistols
Responding to Zoo Protestors
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They should be shot.....with water pistols
toothlessjaws
Well-Known Member
I think the first thing required when responding to anti-zoo protesters is to understand where their moral principals lie: Most anti-zoo sentiment comes from people who value the lives of individual animals over any alleged benefits to the species by keeping them in captive.
In my experience, I have found that most of these anti-zoo arguments come from people who have a very naive and romanticised view of nature and thus often construct their arguments poorly.... something zoos in their response are all to happy to take advantage of.
And so the debate goes nowhere.
For what its worth, I find much of the principal values of the anti-zoo arguments valid. For example I think zoos on the whole largely balance animal welfare against the zoos commercial, operational and financial needs - which isn't necessarily always whats best for the animals. I think with everything from marmosets to giraffes, 99% of zoo enclosures are grossly undersized. Zoos regularly use a generalised conservation argument to justify any and all of their operations, despite some actions being in direct contrast to whats best for the species let alone the individual animals. And then there is the lack of motivation to source new founders for their inbred collections and the constantly wavering commitments to the species kept, something that seems to be a near-unanimous criticism of zoos on this forum. Zoos have plenty of room for improvement and a historical reluctance to read the room when it comes to the publics (generally accurate) criticisms of the way they keep some of their charges.
My advice is to try not to see anti-zoo arguments and the devil and instead a opportunity to encourage improvement. Use your more advanced knowledge gained from your interest in the subject to engage and try and guide their arguments towards not calling for the abolishment of zoos, but for a revolution in their approach.
No species is a better example than elephants. I've always felt the argument should not be so much whether or not we keep elephants in zoos, but about the way we keep them in zoos...
In my experience, I have found that most of these anti-zoo arguments come from people who have a very naive and romanticised view of nature and thus often construct their arguments poorly.... something zoos in their response are all to happy to take advantage of.
And so the debate goes nowhere.
For what its worth, I find much of the principal values of the anti-zoo arguments valid. For example I think zoos on the whole largely balance animal welfare against the zoos commercial, operational and financial needs - which isn't necessarily always whats best for the animals. I think with everything from marmosets to giraffes, 99% of zoo enclosures are grossly undersized. Zoos regularly use a generalised conservation argument to justify any and all of their operations, despite some actions being in direct contrast to whats best for the species let alone the individual animals. And then there is the lack of motivation to source new founders for their inbred collections and the constantly wavering commitments to the species kept, something that seems to be a near-unanimous criticism of zoos on this forum. Zoos have plenty of room for improvement and a historical reluctance to read the room when it comes to the publics (generally accurate) criticisms of the way they keep some of their charges.
My advice is to try not to see anti-zoo arguments and the devil and instead a opportunity to encourage improvement. Use your more advanced knowledge gained from your interest in the subject to engage and try and guide their arguments towards not calling for the abolishment of zoos, but for a revolution in their approach.
No species is a better example than elephants. I've always felt the argument should not be so much whether or not we keep elephants in zoos, but about the way we keep them in zoos...
This is something that I feel is explained brilliantly purely because of the fact that the "animal rights" as a whole, (at least in my experienced) is often proposed to other people as an ideology that animal rights is the need for people to rally up the individuals who seem to keep animals in captivity in a harsh way. Animal rights can also referrer to the brilliant explanation above, so when I try to explain these discussions to a confused bundle of people I should definitely try to explain it in this manner. My hat off to you-
Do not let them be in your head rent free. Simple.
Sadly, Yes... Because of South Africa's "wild" wildlife populations , people think that captivity is bad,I have seen Protesters at Pretoria Zoo, I just chose to ignore them and continue my visit. All this talking about Zoo protests make them look bad yet I've seen many protests at Johannesburg Zoo for Anti-Poaching and Anti-Wildlife Pet trade
littleRedPanda
Well-Known Member
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
They often don't understand the socio-economic root causes of poaching (how could they given that they are largely a middle class phenomenon) either.
littleRedPanda
Well-Known Member
One of the most ridiculous things I read/hear them say is that the zoos should put more of their profits into protecting the animals they've given up to 'sanctuaries'. If they close the zoos, there is no "profit" as they don't exist.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Yes, this is why animal rights groups can be very strategically useful for conservation but the problem is that they often lack more nuance and a comprehensive understanding of what they are protesting about.
For example, they will protest against poaching of white rhino but typically cannot understand that these activities are not driven by inherent cruelty or evil of people but by socio-economic conditions in many African countries.
As such they seem to think (in a very Hollywood action movie sense) that what is needed to conserve rhinos are a load of " totally badass" tattooed ex US marines or British army paratroopers with assault and sniper rifles to kill the "bad" poachers rather than the more mundane option of tackling the economic drivers that create poachers at a grassroots level over the long-term.
*By the way I'm not suggesting that lethal force / counter-insurgency tactics do not have their place in conservation, under some circumstances they do, but there are wider issues with millitarization within conservation and the efficacy of using it as a primary anti-poaching strategy is questionable.
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Yet people unconcerned or reluctant to engage the failure to protect threatened species and wildlands in protected areas or why more greenfields are built over for their benefit while continueing to ignore the displacement of plant and animal life and consequent habitat destruction. It never ceases to amaze me animal welfarists fixate on the petty things and loose it on the bigger picture. Wildlands and all flora and fauna are under continual threat from humanity as we speak.....
This is a general observation not focussed on an individual country or continent. I can vouch for it to be same in my heck of the woods and my own backyard.
It is a true problem... but South Africa has done really good with conservation with many national parks and protected areas for example I own a 200 hectare game farm in Marico with stable populations of Brown Heyena,Impala,Eland and Chacma Baboons and I don't plan to get rid of them, if there a pest or not. There are many people here who do the same as me and if there were more Conservation of South African Species would be Sky-rocketing. I've done my part for the conservation of the African leopard for I have had rescues released on my farm which are now breeding,they come and go as they will and I don't control them. yet poaching of wildlife will still remain no matter what one does....
Absolutely! Poachers aren't a "gang" of people killing Rhinos it's a million dollar industry of countries from all across the globe with thousand of criminals taking part in it...
I'd like to add that many poachers are not poaching because they like to poach. Rather, they are poaching because it is the only viable way of making money where they live. Every day, poachers are forced to choose between killing an exotic animal to make money to feed their family; or not killing an animal, not making money, and letting their family starve. Given these circumstances, it is understandable that poachers would choose to kill the animal to make money to support their family every time. Therefore, one of the solutions to poaching must be to resolve the socio-economic conditions that have forced these poachers to poach in the first place.
Here is a link to Jane Goodall's website where they discuss this phenomenon a little bit towards the bottom of the page: How JGI Fights Wildlife Crime - Jane Goodall's Good for All News
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Very true, I agree.
The poachers are literally at the bottom of the chain when it comes to these kind of sophisticated organized environmental crime networks involved in rhino poaching whether it is in India or South-Africa.
These are often (not always though and there have been notable cases that haven't matched this) people from very impoverished backgrounds and their desperation kind of shows because they are willing to go and poach rhino knowing that they are up against heavily armed and trained anti-poaching patrols with a shoot to kill policy for absolutely crappy pay.
As such these guys are the criminals who take the biggest risks and end up being shot and frequently end up dead somewhere in the veldt or the forest whereas if they are lucky and succeed in poaching they still end up putting themselves at risk of being killed in future attempts or arrested and jailed for peanuts.
Meanwhile the ones who get the big payoffs are the middle men who are sitting in safety in Johannesburg or Kathmandu and then of course the ones who really reap the rewards are the crime barons right at the top of the chain who are very much safe and protected in Hanoi or Beijing.
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Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
I think it has to be an approach that takes a lot of factors into account but I agree that addressing the root causes of poaching which are socio-economic is the best way to tackle the crisis in Africa, India and South-East Asia.
The militarization of conservation presents a lot of ethical and logistical problems like human rights abuses, the growth of a millitary industrial type complex within conservation, corruption and perpetuating poaching through creating animosity with local communities. However, I do think that some level of millitary style response to these environmental crimes is both warranted and necessary.
A comparable situation to that of rhino poaching and the need for military-style response is that of illegal logging / deforestation here in Brazil where you also have low-level loggers who commit the crimes and take the risks of being shot by soldiers (or at least when the army was actually protecting the rainforest
) and the cattle barons hidden away in their mansions who reap the rewards.I tend to think that in the case of the Amazon and Atlantic rainforest that while drastic and sweeping changes need to be made politically there is still a need for a shoot to kill / counter-insurgency style approach on the ground because of how entrenched and desperate the problem is.
To get back to the subject of rhino poaching I do think that it is also important and desireable to tackle the top and mid levels of these organized crime networks by targetting and jailing the big fish. However, this would take even greater cross-continental efforts and would largely be dependent on there being the will to do this in China and Vietnam which there evidently doesn't appear to be.
Moreover, the problem with this approach to tackling crime is that just as with any kind of organized crime network that gets dismanteled by law enforcement there will always be another crime baron or gang waiting in the wings to fill the vacumn left or the jailed mafioso will just continue to run operations from a jail cell.
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The perpetrators are usual suspects of primary function and need, the bigger picture is the huge organised criminal negus networks being the enablers and being the penultimate profiteers and not the poor backdoor folks. Organised crime requires a different approach than local communities and engagement. This entails both professional intelligence, a militarised approach to security and law enforcement as well as active, engaged judicial system with effective penalties for the hightime criminal network people, middlemen and traders with end game big consumers. I am not talking apprehending the hapless no hopers, but the scumbag greedmasters of criminal network peoples.
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Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Yes, totally agree that this is a problem that requires a complex multifaceted approach.
I've always thought that ideally there needs to be a strategy that addresses the socio-economic drivers of impoverished people becoming involving in this form of organized crime and that provides other viable livelihood alternatives.
However, I also think there needs to be the intelligence and militarised approach option and the willingness to use it and if necessary in a lethal sense because even with great efforts to erradicate the root causes there will likely always be incentives for poaching or logging.
Anti-zoo protests are now rarer than 20, 10 years ago or mostly died out. Just in case, some remarks:
- When you encounter actual protesters in the field, ignore them. Much of their tactics is provocation - for example a TV crew filming a quarrel would give them lots of publicity.
- When something starts online or in media, it is best and effective to write at once, that you support zoos because of this and that, and that most public thinks the same. It is good to cite polls which shows that large majority of people support zoos (quite the opposite to the claims that modern people don't support zoos). Such protests start as a trial, and when protesters sense support, they escalate. Otherwise the protest usually just sizzles at the start. Animal rights protesters have only too many possible targets, and usually when met a resistance, they move away. When met with weakness, they proceed. From their point of view, there is always too many animals which need saving.
- Some organizations are making business from protesting. They select places which are likely to give them hush money not to lose publicity - for example protest at a big theme park zoo not at a much worse small roadside zoo. Popular animals like dolphins, killer whales and elephants are seen as possible moneymakers for animal rights organizations. The effective way is to propose to such organization something which would help animals (their official aim) but will cost them money and not give showtime (their real aim). Could they, for example, contribute to the project of helping wild cetaceans, which the zoos supports? Match dollar-to-dollar the zoo contribution to wild habitat protection? This type of organizations will disappear immediately.
- It is not very effective to discuss them on the basis of their logic, counter-intuitively. They have some belief system which you are unlikely to change from inside their mind. Show them the other aspect of the story. That zoo animals live longer than in the wild. That birds on free flight demonstrations return, not fly away. Etc.
- When you encounter actual protesters in the field, ignore them. Much of their tactics is provocation - for example a TV crew filming a quarrel would give them lots of publicity.
- When something starts online or in media, it is best and effective to write at once, that you support zoos because of this and that, and that most public thinks the same. It is good to cite polls which shows that large majority of people support zoos (quite the opposite to the claims that modern people don't support zoos). Such protests start as a trial, and when protesters sense support, they escalate. Otherwise the protest usually just sizzles at the start. Animal rights protesters have only too many possible targets, and usually when met a resistance, they move away. When met with weakness, they proceed. From their point of view, there is always too many animals which need saving.
- Some organizations are making business from protesting. They select places which are likely to give them hush money not to lose publicity - for example protest at a big theme park zoo not at a much worse small roadside zoo. Popular animals like dolphins, killer whales and elephants are seen as possible moneymakers for animal rights organizations. The effective way is to propose to such organization something which would help animals (their official aim) but will cost them money and not give showtime (their real aim). Could they, for example, contribute to the project of helping wild cetaceans, which the zoos supports? Match dollar-to-dollar the zoo contribution to wild habitat protection? This type of organizations will disappear immediately.
- It is not very effective to discuss them on the basis of their logic, counter-intuitively. They have some belief system which you are unlikely to change from inside their mind. Show them the other aspect of the story. That zoo animals live longer than in the wild. That birds on free flight demonstrations return, not fly away. Etc.
I've never encountered a real-life protester, but I have talked to personal friends of mine online who are anti-zoo. I explain to them that their idea of a stereotypical zoo - bars, cages, barren exhibits - are generally outdated nowadays. Do they still happen? Yes, unfortunately they do. But the vast majority of zoos (especially those accredited by the AZA) do not condone those types of exhibits. I then usually tell them anecdotes from zoos saving animals from extinction; Arabian oryx, the Micronesian kingfisher, Jamaican iguana, etc. Plus, I also tell them about how some zoo animals can't be released back into the wild; zoos take in injured bald eagles and abandoned/orphaned grizzly bears that, if they were to be released in the wild, would most certainly be killed or die because they don't know how to survive. Especially captive-born animals; it would be foolish to release most of them into the wild, unless they went through training to do that (like Mexican wolves). Ideally, yes, zoos would be temporary facilities for animals to be released, but that's simply not realistic.