My ever growing collection of animals:

London,Colchester,Newquay and Amazon world have and ithink the Rare Breeds Conservation Centre has them as well

 

I never saw them in london. Shame, they look really intersting

 

i got offered a pair of Tamandua a few months back i think they where near £7000 the pair. from what i heard these where going to be swapped with a zoo for south american rodents not sure which zoo or if it even happened.

 

I think the issue here is that once you get to a certain level of respectability and accountability as a public collection, you can't be seen to be purchasing rare animals. OR importing them, which is still happening, so these zoos are restricted to working with other zoos, or bringing in new species in conjunction with in situ projects (eg Owston's civet). The vast array of small mammal species that have been quite successfully bred as house pets by private breeders are not as accessible to collections not so ready to be uncovered acquiring animals for hard cash. It does still happen, but not nearly as much as it used to.

I am 80% sure that Amazon World was set up by a major bird importer from the mainland. Look at the range of species they have. There is a reason for that, and it's not because the major zoos of the world are all rushing to send them rare animals on breeding loan. They have more toucan species than all the other UK zoos combined...it's not because they're great toucan breeders. As far as I know, all their birds are still kept indoors with no access to outside flights.

Tamanduas are bred, hand-raised and kept like house pets all over the US, as well as Paca, Binturong, Sulawesi macauques, Spider monkeys, and many more species you'd expect to only really see in zoos. Google 'pet tamanduas' and be prepared to cringe at these animals wearing anoraks and clambering over armchairs in people's houses. Yet they seem to do well and breed in domestic situations. Fennec foxes, similarly, do amazingly if you treat them like domestic dogs, but breeding in zoos is still pretty rare. Private breeders need to be brought into the picture with EAZA and regional studbooks/programmes. I don't know why it isn't worked into the wild animal licensing system. It could be a mutually-beneficial arrangement, but I fear many zoos would be horrified at the 'humanising' of animals they send to breeders, as would many breeders protest the hands-off approach of many zoos.

 

But why not? Most respectable zoos do harp on about co-operation/regional zoo breeding programmes etc etc but I cannot see the problem in simply purchasing an animal especially if it has been bred in captivity. Obviously I do not condone indiscriminate and unregulated trade in wild-born animals but there are so many private keepers that they are going to carry on doing what they do no matter what zoos think of them.

Given the bushmeat trade, some importation would help boost variability in some species already held, and could establish captive populations of new species without making a significant dent in the wild numbers. Eg west African species such as Jentink's duikers are killed in large numbers but just twenty or so individuals could get a zoo population going.

 

I always find the animals that private people can keep in the US to be amazing...

 

That’s because a third of the states have no laws regarding exotic animals, another third requires a license that is easy to obtain and the last third has an out right ban.

 

Because they have to appeal to current public tastes, which do not really support exchanging animals for money. Giving an exotic animal a monetary value increases the likelihood of it being traded illegally. Many of the fruits of this illegal trade are scattered across UK zoos, from tortoises to corals, confiscated at customs. If these animals did not fetch a price, nobody would have bothered trying to import them. If the zoo community became more closely involved with organised, regulated private animal keepers, and began to trust them with THEIR animals in exchange for stock bred privately, then we might finally get somewhere. If private keepers can expect to participate fully in and maintain studbooks alongside zoo keepers then the need for financial renumeration would dwindle.

I understand what you are saying about the bushmeat trade, but the logging and mining companies opening up the forest in the first place tend not to be african. And a certain level of 'bushmeat' has always existed, many indigenous tribes eat duikers, no matter how wrong we might presume this to be, it is their forest and they have lived in ecological balance with it way before white men and slavery arrived. Although what is happening now is a more sophisticated trade, look at the companies responsible for the initial destruction rather than worrying about getting some rare duikers into captivity. Again, given the campaign against it, importing refugee animals from this process would be seen to increase demand on those species, only now they are also valuable alive.

 

Thanks johnstoni.

I agree largely with what you are saying, although I am not sure that the public is so very concerned about the prices of animals. Money is always mentioned in news items about stolen parrots, monkeys etc. I am talking about limited legitimate trade in non-endangered species, not the illegal trade in CITES restricted animals which customs confiscate. The tamandua is not endangered, and if a zoo rather than a private owner purchased a pair I don’t think this would be causing problems to the wild population, esp if the individuals had been bred in captivity.

I agree more co-operation between zoos and private keepers would benefit rarer animals, I think this is particularly true with birds although I don’t have a lot of knowledge about this area. Most of the true success stories (of which there are pitifully few) are due to private keepers such as rich landowners, dukes etc.

Re bushmeat I imagine that this has been a phenomenon which has been around for many years, although getting more publicity, not least in some of our zoos recently. There is a bit of the colonial/imperial attitude prevalent here, and logging/mining/and now biofuel companies based in the west are undoubtedly a more serious threat to many of these species and their environment. My point about duikers was probably not clear but given that many are killed and they may not yet be critically endangered then export of a nucleus by the appropriate conservation and local government authorities might be useful.

 

Yeah, it's tricky I think because you have to be seen to have the cooperation and willing of that particular government to loan a breeding nucleus into the care of rich nation zoos while still keeping ownership of the animals these days.....I guess if the government of those countries with endangered duikers have no interest in such a project then one is in danger of activist campaigns and a bad PR experience all round.....toronto tried to do it with proboscis monkeys a couple of years back and had to abandon their plans partly due to how it was percieved.

I don't mean that the public won't attach a monetary value to animals, I just mean there is a greater awareness nowadays of zoos as conservation vehicles and the ideas of them buying animals has generally become less palatable, I would argue due to regional and national zoo policy itself moving away from that, although that is no bad thing. Like I said, it does still go on, but not so often and much more rarely with large or rare animals. Furthermore, the higher up the national 'league table' of zoos you get, the less often their animals are acquired in this way...for several reasons. Hence my point about amazon world being more able to 'get away' with importing all those toucan species.

It also depends on the reputation of an individual zoo. There is less of a critical spotlight on say Howletts than there is on London or Edinburgh zoo.

 

The problem with the bushmeat industry is that it's not sustainable.

Forget the perception that it is carried out by a few part-time hunters with bows, spears and muzzle loaded guns to feed their families; these days it is carried out by highly efficient teams of skilled professionals with high-powered equipment and, in some cases, freezer vans. A lot of the meat goes into the cities.

The point made that the politics of the situation is a delicate balancing act is very true.It's not too hard for governments to turn a blind eye to the bushmeat trade, but they can easily get in "hot water" if seen as giving away the country's assets (even in the form of animals) to the "rich west".