Does anyone else think its strange that San Diego has sent out nearly all of their rare species that other zoos dont have an interest in and simply gave them away to dealers and private facilities. Southern Bush Pigs, suni, roe deer, chinese water deer, indian muntjac, spanish ibex, topi, MacNeil's deer, Indian Hog Deer, Formosan Muntjac, bascially all the rhebok, blue sheep(bharal), and manchurian sika, dorcas gazelles, mishmi takin, the bulk of the cuvier's gazelles, persian goitered are now at a dead end becuase they let the dealers have everything for the last 15 years and other zoos never got a start, black wildebeest, most of the chinese goral, bulk of the siberian/alpine/spanish/nubian ibex, both species of tur, persian fallow deer, eastern kiang, brockett deer, hartmanns zebra, persian onagers, BLESBOK(for goodness sakes one dealer became a millioniare off this one species!), hartebeest, common duiker, beisa oryx, siberian reindeer, congo buffalo, banteng, altai elk, nilgiri tahr, snow sheep, russian saiga, and ETC!!!!! Others being phased out are tufted deer, bearded pigs, many of the deer at the park are severly down sizing(white lipped, sambar, bactrian wapiti).
Do most of you know it cost between 50,000-75,000 dollars for each animal to be imported into the united states and they simply kept them a few years and then gave them away. Think about it, millions of dollars have been spent and what do they have to show, a few pictures and stories that simply go something like..."well we used to have...."
Just think how sickening it will be to visit zoos around the country and look around and say, well i saw everything here at the last zoo. We have lost all of our diversity in AZA and for what some things were hard to reproduce, lack of interest from most of the public, lack of interest from the director. Well someone needs to put a stop to it before we go to every zoo and look around and all you see is reticulated giraffes, grant zebras, african lions, and bongos. It gets old after a while...it's time to see some diversity!!!
