ZooVisitor, your latest posts are not helping your cause. In the face of opposition you have resorted to reaffirming and restating your belief in an extreme viewpoint, instead of supporting your arguments, or reaching for some kind of middle ground. In the process you are just moving some people’s views further away from your own.
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I understand what you are saying.
However, this is something I feel so strongly about that I can't state my opinions any other way than the way I truly believe, and state them completely and honestly.
When you wrote about Creatures of Habitat at the Philadelphia Zoo your positions seemed much more reasonable and less absolute than your opinions appear in this thread.
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I have more facts now about the Zoo's plans for the future, and I know that PETA and other anti-zoo people support attractions like this in zoos, so I guess I have moved to a position of more extreme opposition.
If you were to analyze and reconsider other people’s posts on this thread you would find that people have stated that entertainment should not come at the expense of animal welfare at zoos. Jbnbsn99 discussed the need for a balance of education and entertainment. Instead of asking what that balance should be you seemed to resort to completely discounting entertainment ventures.
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I don't quite understand what I am saying that is wrong regarding this. I have said I believe observing and where possible interacting with animals in zoos is fun, exciting, thrilling, awe inspiring, and fascinating, so any entertaining events that focus visitors on the individual animals is fine.
I just don't want the entertainment (or the education) to be something that distracts visitors from observing or interacting with the actual live animals. For example, LEGO creatures, hot air balloons, musical concerts, puppet shows, or attractions designed to teach general conservation topics, like save gas by riding a bicycle or walking instead of driving, etc. [/quote]
Later on in this thread Sun Wukong and ZooPlantMan also made reference to this balance of education and entertainment by writing how zoological institutions that rely solely on education and research wouldn’t be financially stable. As they have questioned you further you have seemed to resort more and more to restating an absolute position that zoological institutions should concentrate solely on live animals.
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I suggested ways for achieving financial stability while still being just a zoo. But they were discounted by many here immediately, even though they really have not been tested in the current social/economical environment. No one seems to seriously want to try to succeed by being "just a zoo".
I don't want zoos to compete with other attractions or institutions by becoming more like them. I think that is the wrong direction to go, and even if that appears to work at first, it will fail in the long run for all who do that because visitors/customers will get tired of seeing the same kinds of things wherever they go. I think it would be much better business practice to focus on what makes each place unique.
Beyond that, the reason I love zoos is that they have what no other attraction, no other museum, and no other scientific or educational institution has: a great variety of wildlife. That is what I want everyone else to see and love, too. And, if I were a zoo director, that is how I would promote my zoo.
Finally, you seem to think that zoology is the ultimate route by which people can connect to animals. Here you are discounting the diversity of ways that people come to appreciate nature. Some people connect to animals on an aesthetic/artistic level, others might find the politics surrounding animal conservation intriguing and engaging. Ultimately, these people may also come to appreciate animals from a zoological perspective (whatever constricted definition you wish to apply to that term). What’s so wrong about trying to engage different people through different means?
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I may not have made this part of my opinion clear. I want zoos to provide visitors with opportunities to observe wildlife, to observe the fascinating variety of wildlife, and, where possible to interact with individual animals.
I guess you could compare this to the experience of a visitor to an art museum. Just let the visitor be in the presence of the art and interpret it however he or she chooses to from whatever perspective he or she is observing it.
Also, there are three problems with trying to engage different people through different means.
First, when you attempt to draw in people who don't already love animals with events that don't focus on the animals, you provide them with something to do while in the zoo that does not focus their attention on the animals. So there is no guarantee, or even much hope, that they will become wildlife enthusiasts or become wildlife advocates while at the Zoo.
Second, by including attractions or events that don't focus on the animals, you distract the visitors who might have originally come to see the animals, and might have developed interests in specific animals, and might have become wildlife enthusiasts as a result, if their attention had remained focused on the animals.
Third, you deprive visitors who are wildlife advocates and zoo enthusiasts of an opportunity to visit a place that is simply a zoo, which is what they want.
So far, you have failed to provide us with evidence that this dilutes the effectiveness of connecting people to nature or animals at zoological institutions.
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The evidence for me is simple. There are people who are zoo members, or who have visited zoos recently, who can look at scenes being broadcast showing the stranded, oil-covered wildlife in the Gulf Coast without crying.
