The Most Conservation Minded Zoos

F

foz

Well-Known Member
i've set up this thread to identify and congratulate the zoos who have done the most for conservatio, be it through breeding or just for donating sums of money. also the zoos which currently are the most conservation minded of zoos.

to start with perhaps Durrell in Jersey? suely the founding place for conservation having done lots for numerous species including the maurtius kestrel.

any other suggestions?
 
I think Howletts and Port Lympne have done great work with their Gorillas and Rhinos. Also, never been there but hasn't South lakes donated a lot of money to Tiger conservation?
 
ashley-h said:
I think Howletts and Port Lympne have done great work with their Gorillas and Rhinos. Also, never been there but hasn't South lakes donated a lot of money to Tiger conservation?
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Yes I believe they have, didn't they also set up a charity?
 
I would say Toronto Zoo is very conservation oriented; they are involved in programs for amphibians, Vancouver Island Marmots, Black-footed Ferrets, Cheetah, Orang-utan, Gorilla, Eastern loggerhead shrike, Puerto Rican Crested toad. tigers, etc. Not just for breeding programs, but also conservation in general and protection of habitats.
 
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo (and 4 others in NY), is a international conservation organization on the same scale as WWF, Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy etc. It has more field researchers and policy advisers on the ground around the world than ANY of the other big conservation groups, and spends a greater percentage of its funds on program work (as opposed to overhead and fundraising) than any other comparable group.

And of course the Bronx Zoo conducted the very first reintroduction program at the turn of the LAST century (returning zoo-bred bison to the American west), and has been very active in captive breeding efforts and education programs linked to their international field conservation work for many years.

It's almost unfair to compare this organization to other zoos, but since it was established initially to build and operate the Bronx zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society is hands down the largest and most effective zoo-based conservation program on earth.
 
I would absolutely agree that Jersey and New York (WCS) must be high on the list. I'm not so sure about some of the others mentioned - there's a deal of difference between projects with real scientific and educational input and some of the fluffy PR stuff which appears on websites.
I'd give an honourable mention to the ZSL for funding a good deal of unglamorous work around the world and some good gestures, like donating the Arabian oryx Caroline to the World Herd in Phoenix.
I think some of the very first work of this sort was done nearly 50 years ago in the Serengeti by Frankfurt when Prof Grzimek was in charge.

Alan
 
I know the LA Zoo does a lot of work with California Condor conservation and recently with Peninsular Pronghorn conservation. The LA Zoo also established the Mountain Tapir Conservation Fund back in 2000. The zoo also helped with the Arabian Oryx and Golden Lion Tamarin.
 
It's a challenge to distinguish programs such as WCS (Bronx Zoo parent) which has a vast scientific staff spread all around the world (or Henry Doorly Zoo with its Madagascar project), and others who merely fund scientists.

Most field researchers are not actual employees of big NGO's (as are WCS staff) but rather work from grants and funding from many sources. Many zoos fund such research which is certainly partially for the PR value and partially to accomplish their official mission. But would we say they are conservation organizations? Perhaps no more or less than the Boy Scouts are.
 
I know I might sound biast, but I think Marwell is high on the list. They have returned Grevvy's Zebra, Scimitar-Horned Oryx, Roan Antelope and Golden Lion Tamarin to the wild, and have conservation stations around the world, most notably the Marwell Zimbabwe Trust in which they collaborate with Paignton in the protection of black rhino, cheetah and duiker. They have success with british wildlife, having made release programmes for water vole, sand lizard, natterjack toad and reddish buff moth. Infact, the Park's founder John Knowles' ideal for the park was to create a conservation park rather than a zoo for public entertainment. Marwell has a mini-site for their conservation work here.

And as other members have noted, I believe Durrell, WCS, ZSL and the Aspinall Parks are front-liners in the world of animal conservation.
 
reduakari said:
And of course the Bronx Zoo conducted the very first reintroduction program at the turn of the LAST century (returning zoo-bred bison to the American west), and has been very active in captive breeding efforts and education programs linked to their international field conservation work for many years.
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I am always sceptical on 'world firsts'. Can you give any dates and time frames for your claim (just out of interest)?
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
I am always sceptical on 'world firsts'. Can you give any dates and time frames for your claim (just out of interest)?
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In 1905, William Hornaday - first director of the New York Zoological Society - wrote to the US Secretary of Agriculture expressing the NYZS wish to create an American bison herd on a protected area in the US West so as to conserve this disappearing species. The American Bison Society was founded and two years later 15 animals from the zoo were shipped to Oklahoma

The story - which is well known - is told, with period photographs and copies of letters, in Saving Wildlife, A century of Conservation, a WCS publication, on pp. 47-56
 
We might also differ between zoos that have a general pro-conservation attitude with various different projects (like Jersey, WCS, ZSL...) and those that excelled at the breeding (and maybe even re-introduction of) one or two species (Phoenix Zoo & Arabian Oryx, the National Zoo & GLT, Prague & P-Horse, Hannover & Addax...) or a particularily outstanding project (Zuerich- Masoala...).

Other zoos worth being mentioned:

-Muenster Allwetterzoo (Turtles, projects in Vietnam/Cambodia)
-Rotterdam
-San Diego
-Washington DC.
-New Orleans as part of the Audubon Society ("Acres")
-Tallin Zoo (European Mink...)
-Vogelpark Walsrode
-Innsbrucker Alpenzoo (Bearded Vulture & various other European wildlife)
-Belize Zoo
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
I am always sceptical on 'world firsts'. Can you give any dates and time frames for your claim (just out of interest)?
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Bison reintroduction happened in 1907, about 70 years before Sir Solly Zuckerman, the long-time head of ZSL, announced to the shock of many zoo professionals that captive breeding was "not a priority." (This statement presaged a long decline in the stature and effectiveness of ZSL, only now being restored).

History of the Wildlife Conservation Society
 
Sun Wukong said:
We might also differ between zoos that have a general pro-conservation attitude with various different projects (like Jersey, WCS, ZSL...) and those that excelled at the breeding (and maybe even re-introduction of) one or two species (Phoenix Zoo & Arabian Oryx, the National Zoo & GLT, Prague & P-Horse, Hannover & Addax...) or a particularily outstanding project (Zuerich- Masoala...).

Other zoos worth being mentioned:

-Muenster Allwetterzoo (Turtles, projects in Vietnam/Cambodia)
-Rotterdam
-San Diego
-Washington DC.
-New Orleans as part of the Audubon Society ("Acres")
-Tallin Zoo (European Mink...)
-Vogelpark Walsrode
-Innsbrucker Alpenzoo (Bearded Vulture & various other European wildlife)
-Belize Zoo
Click to expand...

All good examples of different approaches to conservation by zoos. It should be noted, however, that the New Orleans Zoo and its ACRES program are not connected with the Audubon Society, which is one of America's biggest and oldest conservation groups. The Zoo is run by the Audubon Institute, a non-profit named for the park in which the zoo is situated ("Audubon Park"). It also operates the new Orleans Aquarium, IMAX, new Insectarium and a few other small facilities in the New Orleans area
 
From czech Zoos Prague and Dvur are obvious choices, probably some of other czech zoos would be worth to mention too, at least for the sake of how czech zoos cooperate.

I wouldn't say Prague conservation based approach is about one species - Przewalski horse from the logo. Gharials, amur tigers, amur leopards*, clouded leopards, asian lions, numerous species of turtles from southeastern Asia, reptiles (like cuban iguanas, komodo dragons)... of course not all species breeded recently. Aside that the zoo is involved in numerous reintroductions.
*for conservations reason of leopards, jaguars were phased out and are not keeped by the zoo
 
@docend24: It's not my intention to narrow Prague Zoo's Ex-Situ breeding successes down to the P-Horse; rather, this was mentioned as an example of a zoo with a special conservation history in regard to a certain species. The National Zoo is neither limited to Golden Lion Tamarins in its conservation work...
 
Putting NZP or WCI-Bronx over some European zoos is more testament to unfamiliarity with the conservation record of European zoos or their ex situ conservation programmes. I would certainly not belittle the conservation record of Zoo Praha or Dvur Kralove.

My listing of major conservation minded zoos will come within the next week and I will take full considerans to past IZY records. Besides I am not in the business of proclaiming world firsts (which I find rather *** :o).
 
Who is "belittling" the records of Prague or Dvur Kralove? They have done extraordinary work, much of it beginning and conducted during a very difficult political era.

NZP has done some good work, particularly with reproductive biology and the GLT program. But they are not even in the same league as WCS--look just at the vast numbers of acres now under protection as a direct result of research and policy activities of WCS scientists. It hasn't hurt the the undisputed "father of field conservation"--George Schaller--has been a WCS staff person for over 40 years. His projects and the resultant protected areas created alone dwarf the contributions of all other zoo-based conservation activities combined.

And I'd love to hear of an earlier example of zoo-bred animals being strategically returned to the wild to re-populate extirpated wild populations than the 1907 bison work of WCS (then NYZS). They would be part of the "lore" of zoos if they had happened.

The work of WCS (or any field-based work supported by other zoos) is not the sort of thing that one will find doing research in IZY--that publication is simply a place to get some information on captive breeding efforts, a very small piece of the much bigger conservation puzzle.
 
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