Unusual animals in UK zoos.

Hadley said:
What Zoomania refers to is the suggestion by the groups concerned that this is what actually happened - rather than a suggestion to repatriate them to farm fields or whatever. They were unhappy that the animals went to a farm as they imaginged they would be slaughtered, even if they were initially breeding stock.
Oh, I see.. The zoo was criticised for potentially sending animals to a farm, not being encouraged to do so. Anyway, it all seems a bit daft to me. Are these people against all meat production in the Uk, whether cattle, sheep or exotic species?
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Oh isee now, so chester didnt send the bison to be killed, they were just accidentely killed. such a shame. Are Bison invluded in the chester masterplan. They were such a great exhibit.
 
ZooMania said:
Oh isee now, so chester didnt send the bison to be killed, they were just accidentely killed. such a shame. They were such a great exhibit.
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American Bison are a great exhibit, most impressive without actually doing anything...

Unfortunately if a zoo relinquishes a species, there's no guarantee what will happen to them in the longterm in their new home. Agreements and conditions of the move get forgotten about after a while and unplanned things happen:(
 
grantsmb said:
American Bison are a great exhibit, most impressive without actually doing anything...

Unfortunately if a zoo relinquishes a species, there's no guarantee what will happen to them in the longterm in their new home. Agreements and conditions of the move get forgotten about after a while and unplanned things happen:(
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This all happened i believe round about the 1980s when Chester still had quite a large group of Bison,but then the zoo antis have always been slow on getting facts right,one group stills shows a photo of Bristols Elephant enclosure saying this is how Elephants are kept in U.K zoos.
 
I think the key word here is 'farm'....in that, if you send your bison somewhere and, oops, they accidently slaughter them, the chances of that happenning are somewhat higher than if they had gone to a wildlife park.

I agree with the animal rights groups on this one, I have to say. It's just an easy option; common zoo species, no longer in the collection plan, or maybe just too many young born last year, and there's some place willing to buy them, of course zoos do it, but its a shame, and very influenced by trends - I think the American bison has a fantastic conservation story, but I have never seen this capitalised on in any UK collection. Nowhere seems to have a really good North American exhibit....the best I guess was Drusillas' Beaver Country, until they mixed the beavers with...Capybara!
 
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Hadley said:
I think the American bison has a fantastic conservation story, but I have never seen this capitalised on in any UK collection.
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How right you are. Its as much a conservation success as Arabian Oryx/nene/Per David Deer etc, but hardly mentioned, even at the locations where these marvellous animals are still kept. Its always been a mystery to me. I always get the feeling they'd be talked about more if they HAD become extinct....
 
Interesting point in that we have spoken of similar situations with Arabian Oryx.....I guess the great divide is whether you have species with a valuable conservation story as a teaching tool, or whether you free up your space for ESB/EEP recommended species, which are not always of high conservation priority (with many ESBs) or have no real prospect for release from ex situ projects and are often exhibited as 'ambassadors'. Sure, if this links to funding for an in situ, and the species is endangered, the logic is of course to prioritise over a species now out of immediate danger, but this is the exception rather than the norm when you examine the animals that replace bison, oryx etc
 
ZooMania said:
They also say Chester sent Ostriches to farms to be slaughtered.
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I would doubt that, they haven't bred ostrich for around twenty years, and the current pair never seem to do anything.
 
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Hadley said:
.....I guess the great divide is whether you have species with a valuable conservation story as a teaching tool,.... the logic is of course to prioritise over a species now out of immediate danger, but this is the exception rather than the norm when you examine the animals that replace bison, oryx etc
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Yes, in the case of the Bison, there was no dramatic eleventh hour rescue mission(arabian Oryx), or particular patron (Peter Scott, Duke of Bedford Etc) largely responsible for rescuing them. Also the turnaround in the Bison's fortunes happened rather earlier than the others, and they were saved largely by 'private ranchers' breeding them up on cattle ranches -which is a rather obscure and not very emotive story.

Also, with big herds again re-established in National Parks, they can't be regarded as endangered any more. Yet they did come perilously close to extinction at one time...
 
I think it is fascinating that they are not actually pure anymore, yet they are 'back' serving their ecological role and to all intents and purposes are American bison, only with possibly better genetic diversity overall. Nowadays I can imagine a conservation programme for a species being abandoned if it was discovered the animals were impure (although, come to think of it...barbary lions...), but maybe the value of having a more genetically robust (and possibly larger) population of very slightly impure animals will be given more thought one day.
 
Hadley said:
I think it is fascinating that they are not actually pure anymore, yet they are 'back' serving their ecological role and to all intents and purposes are American bison, only with possibly better genetic diversity overall. maybe the value of having a more genetically robust (and possibly larger) population of very slightly impure animals will be given more thought one day.
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Can you elaborate on the 'impurity' factor? Are you referring to past crossbreeding with the Wood Bison, or with domestic cattle?

Patrick on this forum revealed the fact that all(?) American Bison apparently possess dometic cattle genes from crossbreeding 'beefaloes' during the period Bison on the ranches were being bred back from near extinction. I was unaware of this... New York Bronx Zoo are often quoted as having the main remnant herd of Bison at this time- were they contaminated too?

I believe a pure population of wild Bison were rediscovered in what became the Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada. As far as I know they haven't been interbred with anything else but whether they are a genuine subspecies I'm not sure of either.
 
As far as I'm aware, Wood Bison are the only 'pure' examples remaining, and that the majority of the wild plains bison are impure. I actually think this should be a model for genetic diversity in many endangered ungulates today. Ecologically speaking, the wild bison are just that, there is no known detriment to the species from the genetic impurity, only our knowledge that it exists. In some ways, where some subspecies are almost doomed now by such a small gene pool, it might be more sensible long term to preserve the existing genes by allowing several impure generations to carry these genes on in greater numbers albeit as non-subspecific animals. This is especially true when a sub-species population can be shown to have beome genetically distinct through isolation rather than a need to adapt to external factors - in that the differences were circumstantially governed by the genetic composition of the founder animals at the point of population isolation.
 
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