It's time to close the zoo

Meaghan Edwards · 13 Mar 2010

The ARists are at it again Laidlaw had issues with Toronto's old tiger dying. He was 17 years old! Has he not had a pet that died?

On Feb. 24, Tillikum the killer whale pulled trainer Dawn Brancheur off her poolside platform at Orlando's SeaWorld by her ponytail, dragging her underwater and drowning her.

Some argue that Tillikum should be put down like a vicious pit bull. But others figure the tragedy was a clear sign that he should be released back into the wild.

Some activists contend this is just the latest in a long line of incidents and situations that prove marine parks, aquariums and zoos are nothing more than the modern equivalents of bear-baiting.

That's not as extreme a suggestion as it might at first seem.

Most people would agree that captive animal facilities are about four things: fun, profit, education and conservation.

No one's disputing the first two, but it's the latter two that form the moral underpinning of the entire multi-billion-dollar industry. In a world that's increasingly concerned about human impact, captive animal facilities are relying more and more on those rationales to justify their existence.

John Nightingale is a biologist and president of the 50-year-old Vancouver Aquarium, which was the first in the world, back in 1965, to capture a killer whale. Though the aquarium has since decided against keeping killer whales, citing the expense of creating and maintaining suitable enclosures, Nightingale is a firm believer in the ability of facilities like his to engage the unengaged.

(For the record, the Toronto Zoo refused to make an employee available to speak with me, and Marineland did not return my calls.)

"Given that we're now approaching 60 per cent of our population in North America are living in cities, people are more disconnected from nature than ever," Nightingale says.

Nightingale maintains that capturing and keeping wild animals is not justifiable except under very specific circumstances.

"You should not be keeping them unless you can provide for their well being, by which I mean their mental health and their physical health, and even then, you have an obligation to utilize them for that engagement, and for beginning that process of creating awareness."

He believes that the interaction implicit in going to see actual creatures, whether they're simply on display or performing, increases the likelihood that people will care enough about them to take some form of pro-conservation action.

But according to studies done at zoos in the U.S. and the U.K., people barely take in the live animals right in front of them. According to Zoocheck Canada, which cites the research to bolster its case against keeping animals captive, people spend an average of 8 seconds looking at reptiles in zoos, between 22 and 50 seconds with primates, and from 30 to 87.5 seconds in front of elephant enclosures.

"I challenge you to tell me what spending that much time with an animal outside its natural environment can do for you," says Robert Laidlaw, president of the 25-year-old Toronto-based organization. "It's very like people clicking through channels on the TV. For me, that's what the zoo experience is."

Jon Haidt, a professor in the University of Virginia's psychology department specializing in the way the human brain makes connections and forms sympathies, agrees with Laidlaw.

"Seeing something as an object is very different from relating to it in a way that involves some give and take," he says, explaining that while, say, swimming with dolphins might increase one's sense of personal connection, anything short of that probably doesn't.

"Seeing it as an object in the zoo is not very different from seeing it as an object on the Discovery Channel."

Though Laidlaw works with zoos as a consultant on animal rights, he says in an ideal world, there would be no zoos, aquariums or marine parks. Apart from their educational shortcomings, he's also not convinced they do much for conservation.

"You get literally billions and billions of dollars dumped into zoos for operational costs, and additional billions for capital projects," he says. Meanwhile, for all their claims about the value of captive breeding to threatened species, of the 16,118 endangered species on the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, zoos have helped only 12 to 15 species. "If you examine the claims of zoos," says Laidlaw, "you'll see they keep bringing up the same few species: the black-footed ferret, the Vancouver Island marmot, the whooping crane ... Every zoo in the world does this."

Laidlaw's solution is to turn the whole concept of captive-animal facilities on its head.

He cites places "nobody's ever heard of" such as the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum outside of Tucson or the Salmonier Nature Park in Newfoundland – which house only native animals in controlled but natural segments of their actual habitats – and specialist facilities like the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat in Northern Ontario. Under this model, the only zoo where you'd ever see a Siberian tiger would be in Siberia.

"Zoos and facilities that people think are the best, they only think that because they have the biggest PR departments," he says of places such as the renowned San Diego Zoo. "In most of these facilities, they have a very skewed totem pole of priorities: the public first, the staff second, the animals third."

Though the World Wildlife Federation of Canada has supported zoos in various ways, conservation science director Steven Price concedes that zoos and marine parks represent "a broad moral equation," involving the capture of certain individual animals for the possible benefit of others in the wild.

Though he says that losing zoos would mean losing a tool in the broader efforts championed by organizations like his, "it doesn't rationalize every other legitimate ethical question about zoos." Such as, for example, whether predatory whales should be kept in tanks and trained to play nice with little bits of protein like us.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/778655--it-s-time-to-close-the-zoo

phoenix · 14 Mar 2010

wow! this article raises almost every point i have been arguing on this forum for years. here you have some intelligent people who see zoos for what they are. they are not opposed to animals in captivity - they are opposed to the way we keep them in captivity. its nice to see someone else question the connection zoos actually make with their visitors. the real contribution to endangered species. state the belief that zoos best focus on their local regional fauna and that just because you are doing a good job at preserving a local species of mouse - it doesn't give you a right to keep a whale in a swimming pool or elephant in a barn all winter.

of course this article containing well constructed views is posted with a set of rolling eyes. because like meghan edwards most of you are so obsessively in love with zoos that you will argue just as narrow mindedly as the most extreme activists that the przewalski's horse foal born last spring justifies the cold bored orangutans that live on the other side of the zoo.

i wish more people in the zoo industry actually set aside the pleasure they gain from working with their tigers, bear and elephants and actually had a think, objectively, about what they really were doing for this species - indeed this individual animal. the zoo world needs a total rethink - but so long as its populated with the same stubbornness that exists on the animal rights side of the fence. they will continue to be the same archaic old institutions, just glossed over with a bit of mock rock and a few palm trees..

Meaghan Edwards · 14 Mar 2010

I see both sides of the issue, actually, and they are going to renovate the Orangutan enclosure. As much as I love the Toronto Zoo, I do see that there are exhibits that need to be redone. I don't care for the circus type shows in Marineland (a place which I am against) and Seaworld and I am against capturing them (I wrote a very angry letter when the belugas were captured for Marineland). I even got flamed here for stating that a zoo has no place in a mall. Again, I see both sides.

I'd just like to see Laidlaw and the like put actions into words; conserve those frogs. Bashing Toronto Zoo does nothing for the Golden Frog. By protecting any number of species, a habitat (as Toronto is doing with their wetlands programs), you can protect a whole ecosystem.

redpanda · 14 Mar 2010

phoenix said: ↑

wow! this article raises almost every point i have been arguing on this forum for years. here you have some intelligent people who see zoos for what they are. they are not opposed to animals in captivity - they are opposed to the way we keep them in captivity. its nice to see someone else question the connection zoos actually make with their visitors. the real contribution to endangered species. state the belief that zoos best focus on their local regional fauna and that just because you are doing a good job at preserving a local species of mouse - it doesn't give you a right to keep a whale in a swimming pool or elephant in a barn all winter.

of course this article containing well constructed views is posted with a set of rolling eyes. because like meghan edwards most of you are so obsessively in love with zoos that you will argue just as narrow mindedly as the most extreme activists that the przewalski's horse foal born last spring justifies the cold bored orangutans that live on the other side of the zoo.

i wish more people in the zoo industry actually set aside the pleasure they gain from working with their tigers, bear and elephants and actually had a think, objectively, about what they really were doing for this species - indeed this individual animal. the zoo world needs a total rethink - but so long as its populated with the same stubbornness that exists on the animal rights side of the fence. they will continue to be the same archaic old institutions, just glossed over with a bit of mock rock and a few palm trees..
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In many ways I agree with both you and the article and many of the points raised are entirely valid, we often just prefer to ignore these as they cast a rather uncomfortable light on the zoos we love so much. Having said this, I think that truly excellent zoos (and, in my opinion, there are very few) can do all the things that every other zoo says they are doing. They give their animals large enclosures and have extensive enrichment programmes, they donate some of the money generated to worthwhile wildlife conservation causes and are involved in captive breeding programmes for a range of threatened species, they imaginatively enlighten guests about the wonder of the natural world and the need to protect it and, on top of that, give them a fun and cost-effective day out. Like I say, very few zoos manage all of this satisfactorily (I don't just mean keeping a herd of prewalski's horse and having a few faded name plates around the place) but whilst there are some, and the possibility of more, the animal rights brigade will never be able to say that zoos as a concept should be abolished.

Meaghan Edwards · 14 Mar 2010

redpanda said: ↑

Having said this, I think that truly excellent zoos (and, in my opinion, there are very few) can do all the things that every other zoo says they are doing. They give their animals large enclosures and have extensive enrichment programmes, they donate some of the money generated to worthwhile wildlife conservation causes and are involved in captive breeding programmes for a range of threatened species, they imaginatively enlighten guests about the wonder of the natural world and the need to protect it and, on top of that, give them a fun and cost-effective day out.
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Yep, and Toronto Zoo does this through a variety of programs. Wetlands conservation; frogs, toads, turtles, habitats, etc, wildlife which is in a Canadian's backyard. They've also recently reintroduced Black Footed Ferrets back into Canada. Then they have excellent ex-situ programs such as the cellphone recycling which doesn't just benefit gorillas, but all the African rainforest, and are involved in Great Lakes restoration and several research projects. There are also several enrichment plans, and old exhibits are going to be done away with. New exhibits are also being made environmentally friendly; for example, there's a green roof for the polar bears.

Some more projects:

Toronto Zoo > Conservation

There's certainly many zoos in this province that need to be shut down immediately, but IMO, Toronto, while it has it's flaws (and every zoo does), is definitely not one of them.

Ned · 19 Mar 2010

The only real justification for preserving animal species is for our own benefit. Animals don’t care about extinction, they don’t sit around worrying about becoming extinct and they certainly don’t worry about it after they’ve gone extinct. We want to preserve species because we like the idea of them existing, it make the world we live in more interesting. I’ve heard lots of reasons for conserving animal species and they’re all flawed. To me it makes no difference if you’re keeping an animal in a zoo because it’s part of a breeding program or whether you’re keeping it just because people enjoy seeing it, both are for our benefit and it’s just as enjoyable seeing common species as it is much rarer ones.
If animals are kept properly, with the opportunity to engage in most of their natural behaviour, I don’t think zoos need justification. However, zoos do provide an interesting and enjoyable day out for people like me and they give the animal rights people a sense of purpose in their lives.

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It's time to close the zoo

Meaghan Edwards Well-Known Member

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It's time to close the zoo

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