ZooChronicles
Member
With the on-going rise in poaching, continuing destruction of habitats and ever growing list of threatened species, do zoos need to be more brutal and in the way they educate their visitors about threat to the planets biodiversity?
Most, if not all modern zoos have very successful ex-situ and in-situ conservation programmes with many doing great work at raising the public’s awareness, but are they doing enough? When you visit a zoo you get information on enclosure about how and why the corresponding species is threatened, some even have interactive education tools to help get the message across further. You can adopt and an animal or become a member of the zoo to provide funding or you can change your habits and recycle more as the leaflet you picked up says, but is it really enough. I wonder what percentage of zoo visitor’s actually think about what they have learned during their visit in the following days and weeks, I imagine that most have forgotten by the time they arrive home, only remembering how cute the baby orang-utan was and not why they are endangered.
How far then can zoos go, would placing more graphic images of poached rhinos, horns cut off along with half its head or slaughtered gorillas that have been the victim of the bush meat trade hit the message home harder?
True it is difficult to balance; zoos are after all a family place and how much can you get away with before causing offence.
Many education sessions at zoos focus on conservation, but in my experience only custom seizures and animal artefacts are used interactively to raise awareness. This is effective but the shock value isn’t there to really cause an effect in the students, sure some will go off and be effected enough to want to act, and it’s those few that are invaluable to the future of conservation.
There has been varying study’s and evaluations over the years to find and answer with mixed results but as with all studies there are biases to work through to find the right answers with many suggesting that yes, awareness in zoos does have an effect on public views, but not a lasting one.
I myself believe that zoos are entering a phase in which they are becoming more and more important than ever in becoming institutions where conservation can be taught, more so now than ever, but I feel they need to evolve to be more strident and hard hitting in putting the message across to really hammer it home.
In scary times for the planets animals perhaps it is the right time to not worry about offending people and hit them with brutal truth.
Most, if not all modern zoos have very successful ex-situ and in-situ conservation programmes with many doing great work at raising the public’s awareness, but are they doing enough? When you visit a zoo you get information on enclosure about how and why the corresponding species is threatened, some even have interactive education tools to help get the message across further. You can adopt and an animal or become a member of the zoo to provide funding or you can change your habits and recycle more as the leaflet you picked up says, but is it really enough. I wonder what percentage of zoo visitor’s actually think about what they have learned during their visit in the following days and weeks, I imagine that most have forgotten by the time they arrive home, only remembering how cute the baby orang-utan was and not why they are endangered.
How far then can zoos go, would placing more graphic images of poached rhinos, horns cut off along with half its head or slaughtered gorillas that have been the victim of the bush meat trade hit the message home harder?
True it is difficult to balance; zoos are after all a family place and how much can you get away with before causing offence.
Many education sessions at zoos focus on conservation, but in my experience only custom seizures and animal artefacts are used interactively to raise awareness. This is effective but the shock value isn’t there to really cause an effect in the students, sure some will go off and be effected enough to want to act, and it’s those few that are invaluable to the future of conservation.
There has been varying study’s and evaluations over the years to find and answer with mixed results but as with all studies there are biases to work through to find the right answers with many suggesting that yes, awareness in zoos does have an effect on public views, but not a lasting one.
I myself believe that zoos are entering a phase in which they are becoming more and more important than ever in becoming institutions where conservation can be taught, more so now than ever, but I feel they need to evolve to be more strident and hard hitting in putting the message across to really hammer it home.
In scary times for the planets animals perhaps it is the right time to not worry about offending people and hit them with brutal truth.
