What I meant is that if collections became smaller, then populations would become smaller to manage. Certainly it wouldn't be harder to the individual institutions, but if collections became smaller then the amount of space available for each SSP would inevitably decline, making it more difficult to manage populations and make it more difficult for them to be sustainable.
I think it would become self-correcting in time. You phase out two species of hoofstock that won't be missed, but you add two additional herds of a remaining SSP hoofstock species, for example. The collection is smaller, but the population will stabilize and become more sustainable.
Note when I said smaller mammals, I wasn't strictly talking about rodents. There are plenty of smaller mammals that zoos can focus on that do have large populations: North American river otters, red pandas, meerkats, prehensile-tailed porcupines, ocelots, golden lion tamarins, Reeve's muntjac, two-toed sloths, and so on.
Furthermore, what I meant by smaller mammals also is that instead of zoos increasing exhibit size, they can decrease the size of the animals. Replacing elephants with antelope is focusing on a smaller mammal, even if it isn't a small mammal.
I did not assume you meant rodents either. I actually did not even realize ocelots were considered a large population at this point as I've only visited one facility that has them on public display, so that is welcome information.
That said, I hope zoos that take this route still do renovation work rather than simply plopping animals in the older habitats. Seeing capybara in a former pachyderm exhibit offers them welcome space compared to some facilities, but the vantage points are clearly built for a larger animal and can prevent getting a good look, so it does help to modify the construction.
Indeed, that is a rather big question. I know if you talked with a lot of zoo educators at different facilities you wouldn't get a uniform answer either. Some may focus primarily on conservation education, others may instead teach about natural history and general knowledge, while a growing number focus on empathy training and creating profound experiences with animals. None of these approaches are necessarily wrong, and the approach used can certainly have a major impact on the educational elements of exhibit design.
This is something I wish we could discuss more often on zoochat as I find it fascinating, and it's one of the only genuinely effective ways that zoos can show their individual character. It's also easier to discuss potential development for facilities when their goals are clear. Conservation education relies more on current or formerly endangered species, for example, while empathy and experience-based work will naturally lean a bit more towards domestics and docile animals.
Thankfully, there are very few polar bears left in the southern United States, most of the places left have climates much more comparable to Europe (e.g., Michigan, Ohio, New York, Illinois, etc.). One of the biggest problems the polar bear SSP has is that they lost a lot of genetics by contracepting a number of females with a contraception that ended up being permanent. That significantly reduced the number of females available to breed, and caused a lot of the current problems.
I'm not sure the contraception story is true. I had a lot of trouble finding information to verify it when I looked previously, and when I've tried to look for more information into it, I was basically told the population has always been struggling and it didn't really make a difference and that there were a lot of more significant problems that had occurred such as the overall death rate and over representation of Brookfield's bloodlines. Finding out the program has not been sustainable for decades was actually a major factor in my loss of faith in the program. Even if all seven breeding pairs had cubs tomorrow, they would not be sustainable, and they would no doubt be forced to breed the cubs, which would bring us down to three unrelated bloodlines eventually at best?
That seems to be a thing of the past, at least here in the USA
I feel obligated to disagree. There are some very major, respected collections that still contain species that are not going to expand or become sustainable. That would sound like bloat, in my view.
I disagree, respectfully. For a species like polar bears, captive breeding will always be necessary, and that’s not even taking into account that a lot of polar bears in zoos are rescues. Also, the AZA is never doing that. Polar bears are one of the most iconic zoo animals. I can get phasing out, say, sun bears, but polar bears? That’s not going to happen. AZA zoos have way too much interest in them.
I will admit this.
The whole polar bear thing came off something I said in response to him saying about how zoos should be downsizing and homogenizing - and then posed the question of which species would get the cut. Polar bears were the example given [in regards to low breeding rate, a phenomenon not as such in Europe]
But the point stands that it's a species too popular to do anything about. And hopefully things will improve.
Rescue animals do not need to be bred. There are plenty of rescued brown and black bears on display that are not bred and they maintain sizable populations. Rescue animals do not all need to be on public display though. I certainly like seeing them, but that is a pretty useless measurement.
Polar bears are the perfect species for discussing the ethical questions at heart here. They are not some obscure nocturnal creature that nobody knows or cares about. They are undoubtedly popular animals (I actually enjoy seeing them a lot, which I doubt anyone on zoochat would assume from this conversation!) with a strong conservation message that benefit from high institutional interest and million dollar investments that many species won't receive, but they are still unsustainable all the same. That's why I find discussing the ethics surrounding them so interesting.
