BBC Horizon - Should We Close Our Zoos? 17/04/2016

As a zoo, generally, they need to manage their populations better in the first place, they do not even attempt to do this. There is also the option of moving specific animals which maybe prone to producing male calves?
They are several ways to control breeding, but if they do want to breed, to produce certain genders, then they have to take their chance, and risk producing males? Obviously you cannot guarantee which sex is produced.
Surplus males have always been euthanased of course, but not in such a public way. Sometimes euthanasia is the only option left, but bodies such as EAZA, who were less than helpful in the Marius situation, need to review their policies to help zoos in that difficult situation rather more than they do currently.

Another issue I have is what exactly is so educational about the public dissection of such an animal for children to witness anyway?

 

It was an interesting watch, and I tend to agree with peoples views about it which they have posted on here.

One thing that got my goat was the typical anti-zoo focuses them being Orcas*, Elephants and Polar Bears, with bits about other mammals (important to note a lack of any species which aren't superstars, barring brief mentions of a couple of not as well known mammals). There were no mentions of species such as certain frogs which have been bred well in captivity or any other conservation success stories. Also little about the roll zoos play in scietific research (except ageing studies into stereotypical behaviors (which are more anti-zoo)) and education; they seem to take the idea zoos were only there to breed endangered species such as Rhinoceroses and Elephants.

I was honestly expecting better, especially as Horizon is usually much better than this 'collection' of seemingly random pieces about zoos. I felt they could have had sections which weren't just Liz Bonnin talking to someone in some far off location, maybe more of an explanation to things brought up in the programme.


*Just to make a note I'm not really 'for' Orcas being captivity, but I've never seen any captive cetaceans, so I would prefer to make up my mind properly on the subject once I've actually seen captive cetaceans!

 

Macaw16 I agree with you on your point regarding no mention of the conservation work with amphibians etc.. etc.., it was very much a mammal-based programme.
I was quite surprised not to see members of the Born Free Foundation appearing, to join in the "zoo-bashing" exercise!

 

What I was going to put in that post (but forgot to!), was that I was pleased that it wasn't just a load of nonsensical comments by PETA, CAPS, Born Free etc. making the usual points.

 

'No! That is not allowed. Charities can make a surplus in a financial year, but that money must be used to further the charity's aims.'

Alan

Apologies, it was late when I wrote 'profit' instead or 'surplus' but that wasn't really the point. 3% of what? was my point, UK zoos' income European Zoos, Worldwide? Asian Zoos weren't featured, yet we see quite a lot about them in the media. This was just one example of something being presented as a fact, when really, the statement was meaningless. There is no point telling us that zoos spend 3% of their income on conservation if we don't even know which zoos in the world are being included and, of course, depending on the establishment we might expect very different amounts of income to be spent on conservation.

 

Yeah, I think if you're gonna make the argument that zoos in general are unnecessary, you should be talking about a variety of animals rather than just a few. I mean, pretty much anyone can see that some animals are better suited to captivity than others. If you want to argue that orcas or polar bears or elephants or whatever are bad candidates for captivity, that's fine, but you can't use just a few species like that to bring animal captivity as a whole into question. That would be like saying "I think it's bad to keep pets and here's why" and only using tigers, macaws, and bison in your examples.

You mention certain species being "superstars", I think that's where a decent chunk of anti-zoo sentiment comes from. Most people only pay attention to the big animals, so they get the impression that zoos don't do much to help wild animals. I bet if more people paid attention to the small animals, there would be just a little less "zoos are real bad!".

 

Is this any way to treat Liz Bonnin? Is there any point to bias, documentary TV? Does she have a pointless stressful life forced to travel around the world on long hall flights to interesting tropical places? She is surely adapted to a temperate climate. Can she endure such relentless stress? (Show Liz looking bored in an airport lounge, cue sad dreary, funereal music). Forced to be away from her familiar social group and mate is no longer an acceptable way to treat a human being. 9 out of 10 carefully edited scientists agree.