Take reptiles as an example. A lot of the education reptiles used in zoos are common household pets and aren't at much risk of being endangered (example: corn snakes, bearded dragons, etc). So there's not much of a push to breed these animals or loan them out to other zoos. How are these animals obtained? (other than being rescued). Does anyone know if AZA accredited zoos ever buy reptiles such as corn snakes from for profit breeders?
I can speak from a ZAA (Australia) perspective which would be very similar if not exactly the same as the AZA. Within zoos there is a policy of "free exchange" ie no cash changes hand nor is there an expectation of an exchange of equivalent value. Most zoos have a constant supply of common reptiles from public surrenders, in fact there is more often a problem of not having the space for any more so buying them is never a question. On occasion zoos will purchase a rarer animal. However often zoos work in with private breeders in exchanging animals to maintain populations in captivity. Sometimes (and probably more often than you might expect) private breeders are happy to give animals to zoos. The caveat to this is that more and more zoos have to be sure that people they deal with are "on the up and up".
Zoos do use breeders that are ethical or on their approved lists. For example, quite a few zoos pull exotic cats from the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound which holds North Chinese Leopards, Persian Leopards, Geoffroy's Cat, Margay, and many more. So yes AZA zoos do take from breeding centers like this one because the AZA doesn't manage rarities very well (what they do manage becomes so widespread it is no longer rare). So if zoos want a rare species they might reach out to a specialized breeder.
Emerald Forest Bird Gardens in Southern California comes to mind, quite a few zoos have received toucans and parrots from them.
Yes. Just because a breeder makes a profit doesn't mean it's unethical for zoos to purchase from them. In fact it can lead to messaging about researching captive breeders for exotic pets instead of wild caught individuals.
I do know that the zoo I am a volunteer from has gotten animals from non-AZA facilities on a handful of occassions. On the list I have of residents, the only ones listed as coming from a private source are various reptiles, poison dart frogs, our chinchillas, and our alpacas. The boer goats came from the University of Rhode Island and our now-deceased silver fox rabbit came from Unity College.
I know Toronto has in the past bought animals from private individuals. Most notable are the white lions which they purchased from a reserve in Africa and the watusi which came from a Canadian ranch. However both of those purchases came at a funny time for the zoo when they had been expelled from the AZA due to the giant mess of the African elephants departure. Because of that they didnt have to play by the AZA's rules. They only had to go by the CAZA's rules and I have a sneaking suspicion its way more relaxed rules since there are several medium sized private zoos as part of the CAZA with some far less common species. Generally though Toronto has been lucky to work with some amazing private breeders and collectors who will loan them animals. There is one private bird collector in particular they have an extremely good relationship with and thats resulted in some nice additions for the zoo even if temporary.
Yes - AZA just requires that the zoo have some sort of vetting/approval process for dealing with non-accredited animal vendors.
In Australasia, several zoos have received animals from private breeders that have been of great benefit to our captive breeding programmes: Tipperary Station in Australia was a private collection that held Addax, Scimitar-horned oryx, Common hippopotamus, Pygmy hippopotamus, Common eland, kudu, tapir and many others. Some of the hippos entered accredited zoos and essentially saved our network considering more can’t currently be imported into the region (biosecurity) and our hippo populations of both species were in dire straights. Scimitar-horned oryx were sold to Mary River Australian Safaris, which now have herds numbering in the hundreds. Several have in turn entered our zoos and provided fresh genetics to the breeding programme. Hamilton Zoo’s Himalayan monal came from a private breeder and considering they’re rare in New Zealand aviculture, only held in one other zoo and unable to be imported (biosecurity), this was a incredibly fortuitous acquisition by the zoo. I wish the zoo and private breeders success with breeding this bird as it’d be a great shame to lose it from New Zealand.
