Conservation vs Education vs Entertainment

Look at interactive exhibits and animal experience programs, these things are meant to be appealing to normal society

It’s true! You seem to think normal society doesn’t enjoy education and that they only go to zoos to have fun.

 

So when you guys are talking about "success", do you mean financial success, or success in the mission of the park?

As for the title question, the conservation and education are so tied together that it feels weird to put a "versus" in between. Like, how can you promote conservation without educating people? And if you educate people about animals without mentioning conservation, that's not really an education.

On the subject of recreation, yeah, that's necessary too to draw people in. Even museums, which everyone generally agrees to be educational, need to be fun and interesting. Stuff can be educational and entertaining at the same time. Although, a lot of people think that just seeing an animal counts as "educational" and sketchy places use that to justify unethical practices because hey, this makes people care about the animal, throwing in a half-assed conservation message totally makes our tiger cub cuddle sessions and badly inbred animals okay!

So, yeah, I disagree with the notion that just seeing an animal counts as educational or good for conservation because I think that presentation matters. A lot of sketchy places will claim that their breeding of certain animals is good for conservation, but I don't need to explain to ya'll here why that's an outright lie. I also question what kind of message people walk away with when they do photo ops with large carnivore cubs. Do they view them as wild animals, or just some cool entertaining thing? I also see a lot of people argue that these places are necessary because "in the future they will be the only way to see these animals", which makes me think that any lip service paid to conservation didn't do anything because that statement translates to "there is no hope, conservation is going to fail".

I'm gonna keep an eye on this thread. I've been thinking about these subjects a lot lately because I'm trying to write a short story that ties into these questions.

 

These two things are linked together I think, to accomplish the mission of the park it's necessary to have financial success.

Other than that, really interesting post and I agree with you on big cat photo shoots and other unethical practices.

 

I would say conservation is the more important purpose for zoos. Without it, it is hard to justify keeping animals in captivity at all. It used to be that zoos were simply places for the public to pay to look at a captive animal, perhaps alone in a cage, without any attempt to mimic its habitat. It was 'educational' in that they wouldn't otherwise get the chance to see such a spectacle. That paid the bills though and many animals were taken from the wild for this purpose, with all the ethical and conservation issues that raises. Nowadays we should be prioritising what is perceived to be the best outcome for the animals, as individuals and for their species, in the wild.

 

Technically speaking it does. To use the analogy of marketing from my previous post, it is an equivalent of blog celebrities getting paid for mentioning product X.

You are however right that these zoos should do much more. At least have well done educative plates and speeches, and put a collection box for some wild conservation project...

 

It's worthwhile to remember that in the early part of the century the Giant Sable population was decimated because Natural History museums wanted dead dioramas to show to the public and the population in Angola was rendered unsustainable because of that slaughter. Zoos must be careful not to emulate that role for the sake of 'education'. Dead dioramas became live dioramas courtesy of Karl Hagenbeck in the 1940s, when he began removing rare animals from the wild for zoos!

 

I would agree that conservation should be the priority and the justification for zoos but in my experience you just cannot have effective ex-situ conservation in a vacuum without also placing an emphasis on education. The two are heavily intertwined and absolutely not mutually exclusive and therefore should both be considered as top priorities because to focus on one to the detriment of the other simply detracts from the efficacy of both in the longterm.

You mention about the old style of "education" at zoos which you correctly assert was actually more about public recreation than true learning and you are right in suggesting that it was totally ineffective and a relic of the Victorian age. But that isn't really how environmental education happens within the majority of zoos anymore and educators working in these institutions tend to be well versed and trained in pedagogical methods of teaching and meaningful immersive learning (and sometimes enough to put higher education institutes to shame).

Also, it is worth mentioning that though it was once the historical norm there are now very few zoos which obtain their stock from the wild (those that do often do so for conservation purposes) and the institutions that do display animals of wild provenance have usually rescued or rehoused these individuals when they have been brought in injured and are therefore unable to be released back into the wild.

 

You're right, the Hagenbecks had been taking animals out of the wild for decades before the 40s, which doesn't improve matters much.

I quite like the idea of zombie zoologists though!

 

Correct.

I would like to say generally the conservation movement has to communicate more effectively with the general public. We are still on a high learning curve and sometimes ... perhaps too polite in debate and shy away from public engagement of sensitive subject matter or issues deemed controversial.

I would say grab the pre-misconceptions and the challenges we face by the horns.

 

Totally agree. I think for the most part we have yet to learn how to communicate well with the general public and this is a gigantic problem in itself which leads to mistrust and lack of popular support for interventions amongst other problems.

Another area of difficulty as I've said many times on this forum and one of the biggest problems in my opinion is that we have yet to learn how to communicate and behave well to and with other conservationists. If we are unable to do this within our own field / team then we are even more unlikely to succeed in communicating with the general public.

Again , I agree , we do need to rise to the challenges even if they are steep and intimidating.

 

I'm no expert on any of this by any means. But as this is seemingly an opinion based question, I'll give it a go. Keep in mind I'm probably hopelessly optimistic about all of this.

In my opinion, recreation/fun, conservation, and education are all so intertwined in the concept of a good zoo that it's difficult to pick one. They should all be important, ideally with conservation and education lifted above recreation. And I still think that without even one of these three, a zoo isn't respectable. But when it comes down to it, all a zoo NEEDS is recreation. As long as it's a fun place to bring the kids, spend a day to relax, and at least looks nice on a surface level it's going to get visitors.

As for which of the three I think is most important? Education. How can we expect people to care if they don't know why they should? Conservation depends on education fundamentally. Teaching future generations about why we should protect these animals and inspiring THEM to join the cause should be the number one priority for zoos. Of the three this is in my opinion the most vital.

But zoos need to have a balance. Ideally they have all three. They teach guests about the values of conserving wildlife and educate them, but also provide fun for guests and have innovative ideas that keep drawing guests back for recreation. They then use these profits to make impacts elsewhere and support conservation, which in turn improves their image.

 

I dunno, in my experience, just because something CAN be educational doesn't mean that everyone is going to take advantage of it as an educational opportunity. The question is, how do you make people learn? Wish I knew the answer to that, ha ha.

 

Very well said !

 

I require taxonomy! I need to change incorrect taxonomy!

 

The only problem with your argument is that I never actually 'dismissed the importance of education and conservation in zoos and never would. My point remains that some zoos operate in the 'real' world ie the one outside public subsidy, and not just in the UK. Those that do, contribute just as much (if not more, proportionately) to society, the economy, education and conservation as do those operating from under the blanket and cushion of public funding.

 

For-profit zoos (i.e, what I assume you mean by "private") are relatively rare in much of America. Many of the private zoos here are rather substandard compared to the non-profit ones, and their contribution to society is questionable. Again, your assumptions are not universal.

I'm glad to hear that you do not dismiss the value of education programs in zoos. In your message that started our exchange it sounded like you were.

 

Again, to correct you I have not made assumptions, so they clearly cannot be universal, and I did not use the descriptions 'private' or 'for profit'. If you read back through the above posts you will see it was actually you who did so not me. There are very many countries outside the USA, and in many zoos operate very differently to those you are used to.