Damian Aspinall doesn't seem to be aware of the threats facing wildlife and wilderness areas in general around the world if he's talking like that. It's all well and good to claim that zoos are like prisons and should be shut down because they only exist for our entertainment and so forth. If that's his stance, then he should have shut down his parks as soon as he inherited them, and used his wealth to fund conservation programmes, anti-poaching patrols, etc. around the world.
Don't get me wrong here, he's doing a great job with reintroducing animals from his parks back to their native countries. I applaud him for donating the black rhinos to my country, Tanzania. However, i'm sure he's aware of the current threats facing Tanzania's most famous parks and reserves - Serengeti National Park and Selous Game Reserve. There's an ongoing issue regarding the highway that the Tanzanian government plans to build which will cut across the Serengeti, right across the path of the annual wildebeest migration. There are plans to build a hydroelectric dam at Stiegler's Gorge in the Selous. And lastly, there's the uranium mining project in the Selous, which will result in part of the reserve being hived off and turned into a wasteland.......this will only make things easier for poachers, and the Selous is one of the few places which has black rhinos. The reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and yet UNESCO have given the Tanzanian governement the go-ahead to proceed with the mine. South Africa is sending 32 black rhinos to Tanzania, all of them to the Serengeti. They sent five of them in 2010 and one has already been killed by poachers.
These are just a few of the threats to wildlife conservation in Tanzania, not to mention the rest of Africa and other countries around the world. And here we have a conservationist, Damian Aspinall, who i'm sure is well aware of all these facts but still insists on zoos being shut down and the animals returned to the wild. I also find his argument about "zoos not returning enough animals to wild" invalid. It's great that his parks managed it, and also fund the gorilla sanctuary in West Africa.......but not all zoos have the resources to do that. Zoos also exist for many other reasons apart from being "breeding centres" for animals to be released into the wild. Zoos are educational centres for adults and kids alike. Most people hardly know anything about nature and wildlife, or the threats facing wildlife conservation......and very few people bother to watch wildlife documentaries on TV. Also, a lot of people can't afford to travel to see animals in their natural habitat, and they're more than satisfied to see them in captivity. Zoos also preserve the environment to some extent. If most city zoos didn't exist, there would probably be some kind of residential or commercial development on the land that they occupy.
I agree that zoos should improve their facilities if they're not adequate for the animals they have. But the business of shutting them all down and returning the animals to the wild is absolute rubbish. I would agree with that if we lived in a perfect world, free of corruption, etc. But unfortunately this isn't the case. Being born and raised in an African country, I know what it's like out there. You can return as many animals as you like to the wild, but all it takes is a few corrupt "people in high places" to ruin everything and wipe them all out again. In addition, there are people who pose a threat to wildlife out of necessity.......here i'm referring to those who live in villages around the parks and reserves, and have to share the same space with wild animals. There's always conflicts between villagers and wildlife because they're both competing for the same space.
So maybe Damian Aspinall should come up with a different strategy like assisting the organisations who work with villagers in educating them on the benefits of wildlife conservation, or maybe funding anti-poaching units to protect the very animals he plans to release into the wild. As far as i'm aware, Tanzanian game parks have very poor security - not enough rangers and poorly equipped too. They don't lack the funding, all the parks generate enough income from tourists.......most of it tends to "disappear" rather mysteriously. Another issue is that most of the locals there have hardly got any idea of the threats facing wildlife and environment in general, and most of them couldn't care less. And on the other hand you have the government who claim they're "doing everything they can" to fight poaching, but yet want to build highways, dams and mines in the parks, not to mention requesting CITES to allow them to sell their ivory stockpile even though elephants poaching is on the rise again, and a couple of large ivory shipments from Tanzania have been confiscated recently.
Sorry for the long rant guys, it wasn't my intention to type so much.......but I just felt that I had to get it off my chest
Now if only Mr. Aspinall could be made aware of such facts, he might change his conservation strategies, and give up the idea of shutting down zoos. Oh and I almost forgot.......zoos exist in Tanzania and other African countries too, despite the fact that we have all these great wildlife parks "right on our doorstep". Ironic isn't it? Most Africans have never seen the wildlife that our countries are famous for, and the majority can't afford to visit the parks.......so yeah, once again zoos provide an opportunity for people to see and learn about wild animals and the threats they face, and are not just "prisons" or entertainment centres.
