The Nature Conservancy's new philosophy of conservation

Thanks David.

I think this is an interesting article and I agree that conservationists do need to be realistic about what can be done. It is difficult to come up with concepts of an ideal world. I would like it if no more natural habitats were destroyed and there was a chance for endangered wildlife to boost their numbers. Unfortunately, I can only really see two definite outcomes:

1. The human population will continue to grow, as natality greatly exceeds mortality each year.
2. Natural habitats will continue to be destroyed, threatening the existence of many species, especially those requiring large, continuous territories.

While some zoos will continue to try and conserve small species that can be bred and released into the wild, I expect that most will continue reducing the number of species in their collection in order to increase enclosure size for species that are already overrepresented in captivity (and therefore safe from total extinction) and which will never be released into the wild, due to problems of habitat and developing independent behaviour.

I hope I'm wrong about this, but when I realised that there are now 3 times as many people living on Earth than there were when I was born and the rate at which habitats are being destroyed, I'm afraid I'm not optimistic about the future for wildlife.
 
Thanks David.

I think that, first and foremost, the gulf between development groups and conservationists has to be bridged. Poor people without sufficient money to have a decent standard of living are impossible to preach the conservation message to. Equally, development schemes that damage the environment are no long term benefit to anyone.

I also suspect that we're going to have to accept that the number of places where big, fierce animals can be allowed to live their lives without some form of management are going to be very limited. It's going to be possible to appeal to a small farmer in the Amazon to leave a few trees in place for callitrichids; to expect him to happily accept Jaguars lifting his stock - unless he's given adequate compensation - is another matter.

It would also help, of course, if in the most highly developed countries we learned to be a bit less demanding of the earth's resources. We might then get countries such as China, India, Brazil and Nigeria to listen to us more patiently when we bash on about sustainable development.
 
Thanks Ian

I agree that we need to take a wider perspective and not expect people in third world countries to behave in a way that we wouldn't consider. A few years ago, some people complained that people in China and India shouldn't have fridges as this would affect the ozone layer. When I visited Bronx Zoo, there was a duisplay by the snow leopard exhibit. A farmer needs 12 goats for his family to be fed for a year. A snow leopard kills a goat, so the family has to cut down on food. What should the farmer do? The display looked at the issue from different angles, from conserving the snow leopard to killing it. Sometimes, there are no simple answers and some people in Europe and North America expect habitats and wildlife to be conserved in other countries, but not their own.

People in the third world should see benefits from conservation. There's no point in saying that things will be better in 50 years time if most of the members of the audience will be dead by then. I can understand the argument that land can be put aside for marmosets and tamarins, but not for jaguars - and that will be increasinly true over the next few years.

People in relatively affluent countries should be setting an example and perhaps we should be putting more money into protecting wildlife and habitats, as well as helping poor people have better livelihoods.
 
That was really, really interesting. Recommend reading the article if you have the time (it is a bit lengthy).

One so-called "fact" mentioned in passing I am not sure I agree with. "Humanity has hunted most of the major predators to extinction." Really? Over fifty percent of the large predators that existed a few thousand years ago no longer exist? Cats are my specialty and I know for a fact not one single species of cat has gone extinct in modern times. I do not know of any dog (canid) species either (the thylacine is extinct, but of course that is not a true dog).

The irony of this is that the article is written about a guy who is breaking conservation myths like this, but then the writer throws out an unsubstatiated myth of his own.

The one piece that may have applications to the zoo world is how it talks about how young people are no longer exposed to nature and no longer identify with it. Members of The Nature Conservancy and similar groups are mostly (almost exclusively) retirement age, according to the article. Zoos, on the other hand, attract mostly a demographic of young families with small children. As young people become increasingly separated from nature, I think it will be more important than ever for zoos to connect them. That is one reason I really like immersion exhibits and hate those gorilla jungle gyms that our UK friends seem to defend so staunchly.
 
Arizona Docent said:
Cats are my specialty and I know for a fact not one single species of cat has gone extinct in modern times. I do not know of any dog (canid) species either (the thylacine is extinct, but of course that is not a true dog).
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What about the Falkland Island "wolf" Dusicyon australis.
 
Well, this was depressing.. Interesting article, some really interesting points there, thanks for posting..

According to the article, I have a mentality of 60+ years old gentleman :)

I mean, there are some interesting thoughts, but how would this work in the field? Who´s gonna determine the value of each species? And which species or areas he doesn´t want to protect anymore? I can understand the impulse, but can´t imagine how this would work.

I tried to imagine it on a real-life situation in my locality. So let´s say... Dublin Hills - park/forest south of Dublin city. With this view, it could be decided, that this area has a value to people (cleaning the air? water retentions? area were people go to relax?). And therefore it should be protected from, let´s say, industrial development. Everybody agrees and forest stays. However, not all species living there are really "necessary". There is no need to protect every species, so we no longer need to protect the (native) red squirrel against the invasion of (introduced) grey squirrel, because is no longer required to protect all biodiversity. And most of the people don´t care whether they see the grey or the red one, therefore, the red squirrel doesn´t really have any greater value to us.

I am exaggerating here a bit, but this is how this concept could be understood. And people could use it as an excuse in various situation, it could become a really dangerous precedent.

Anyway, it was really depressing to read. Especially the part about young people - is it really that bad? I think that in past few years we had a boom of various educational programs for schools and public, some of them really good and I believe very influential. People are learning to appreciate biodiversity, more people are getting involved in various projects and surveys, kids often know more about animals than their parents and grandparents combined... We can´t give up now..

(BTW, it´s a bit similar to the http://www.zoochat.com/65/conservation-triage-245550/ thread, isn´t it?)

Well, no matter what he says, I will always value biodiversity and mourn every species we lose.
 
Just to add to the train of thoughts - I think it´s very likely that the future generations of conservationist will abandon the concept of saving subspecies individually, as it´s gonna be hard enough to safe a species as whole. (Not saying I would agree but it might get to the point where there will be no choice.)
 
The one piece that may have applications to the zoo world is how it talks about how young people are no longer exposed to nature and no longer identify with it. Members of The Nature Conservancy and similar groups are mostly (almost exclusively) retirement age, according to the article. Zoos, on the other hand, attract mostly a demographic of young families with small children. As young people become increasingly separated from nature, I think it will be more important than ever for zoos to connect them. That is one reason I really like immersion exhibits and hate those gorilla jungle gyms that our UK friends seem to defend so staunchly

I'd just like to chip in with a couple of points here, without wanting to get in a dispute with someone I admire :):

- If conservation in this century is going to be effective, it surely must see to it that money is spent wisely. Howletts' gorillas are fitter, more physically active and breed far better than gorillas elsewhere in the UK. They thus make a better show of illustrating a magnificent animal than their counterparts at London, in an immersive exhibit that cost far more money

- I also think that it's vitally important that zoos don't, in the race to make money, forget to make space for the small, the retiring, and the less obviously charismatic. If they are to be taken seriously as showcase of biodiversity, then the Felidae need to be represented by Jaguarundis and Fishing Cats as well as Lions and Tigers, for example. A good collection of Tenrecs illustrates biodiversity on Madagascar just as well as yet another group of male Ring-tailed Lemurs. And the steady reduction of bird species in so many mainstream zoos flies (excuse pun!!) in the face of the fact that they are the most successful and visible group of land vertebrates, and as such surely meriting serious attention.
 
Thanks for your ideas, Ian. I agree about the tenrecs, which give a good example of adaptive radiation, but I have only seen examples of spiny tenrecs in zoos. I agree there are too many ring-tailed lemurs in zoos, while there are some species of lemurs that I haven't seen in zoos, although I've seen some of them in the wild.

Like you, I think that visitors should see that the cat family includes small species, as well as large ones. Species such as the rusty-spotted and flat-headed cats have the large-eyed look that could appeal to visitors and the area occupied by one tiger enclosure could provide for a few species of endangered smaller cats that are only represented by a few captive individuals at present.

I also accept Steffka's point about subspecies. If we really want to conserve biodiversity, we should be looking at saving animals from different phyla, if possible. Captive collections of hundreds of individuals of some subspecies of a large mammal that will probably never return to the wild seems to be a luxury we can't really afford. It seems daft that so much money is being spent on some species, while some orders of mammals are not represented in zoos. Have any Zoochatters seen shrew opossums, the monito de monte or marsupial moles in any zoo? Are there any captive cobegos? As Ian Robinson says, many zoos are also reducing their bird collections and some bird orders are poorly represented in zoos. Once again, I quote George Orwell, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
 
IanRRobinson said:
I also think that it's vitally important that zoos don't, in the race to make money, forget to make space for the small, the retiring, and the less obviously charismatic. If they are to be taken seriously as showcase of biodiversity, then the Felidae need to be represented by Jaguarundis and Fishing Cats as well as Lions and Tigers, for example. A good collection of Tenrecs illustrates biodiversity on Madagascar just as well as yet another group of male Ring-tailed Lemurs. And the steady reduction of bird species in so many mainstream zoos flies (excuse pun!!) in the face of the fact that they are the most successful and visible group of land vertebrates, and as such surely meriting serious attention.
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Yes, I think every ZooChatter agrees with this. One criticism of the zoo I volunteer at is that it is a small zoo yet only exhibits large animals (with the exception of some songbirds in the walk-in aviary). There are no small mammals and there is exactly one snake species and one lizard species on exhibit. Given our small size, we could show A LOT MORE animals if we got rid of a couple big ones and replaced them with several smaller ones.
 
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