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Should we close our zoos

Discussion in 'General Zoo Discussion' started by Asiaticlion2015, 20 Apr 2016.

  1. JVM

    JVM Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I'm not touching the question of culling and deaths in zoos. I've gotten into that argument before and said things I'm ashamed of.

    I don't think it's wise to make concrete judgements about whether or not the mere concept of a zoo is inherently ethical. The Dallas World Aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, and SeaWorld, for example, are very different facilities with different circumstances and goals. There is no catch-all solution to these different situations.

    I also think we should remember zoos are sensitive to economic climate, and the current climate is still seen as negative.
     
  2. premierfong

    premierfong Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Never. We should have all type of zoos
     
  3. taun

    taun Well-Known Member

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    This can cause major problems in many species.

    Plus reintroduction projects usually have a half way house (Rescue centres are full now) so where do you put these animals?

    Its a noble idea but not feasible at the moment for every zoo species. It is also mostly only fast breeding animals,short lived animals (which usually go hand in hand, dear and antelope species that this is the case for, as they are harder to manage with other methods.

    Were only talking about this because one giraffe was culled and we where told about it.
     
  4. overread

    overread Well-Known Member

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    Yeah you can't just drop animals into the wild.

    Even with proper reintroduction programs there is often many of the early generations lost because of a lack of suitable skills and environmental experience; and the last thing you want is to add animals that will compete with the native ones and have your captive bred one beat a wild one in a fight only to have your captive one then starve due to lack of skills.

    Many animals are also highly territorial so where there is limited environment there is also limited capacity and both males and females can compete heavily for territory.

    5000 is honestly a small number if they are also including all the smaller mammals - consider how many mice or rats will have as babies and how many might be surplus in the system. Very quickly you can get up to those 5K numbers without many of the larger animals being a part of the process.
     
  5. Jurek7

    Jurek7 Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    The fact that you think? Can you track it down to the origin? Because, for start, I heard of nobody who actually gathers such statistics from all zoos across Europe. So it is somebody's out-of-the-blue-sky guess, in the best case. I wouldn't like to discuss urban legend.

    And I think it is weird number, because:
    - Animals in zoos include domestic animals otherwise raised for food, rodents otherwise raised as feed animals, and small animals where single individual can produce more than 5000 young in one year.
    - Europe has over 2600 zoos: ZootierlisteHomepage
     
  6. Jurek7

    Jurek7 Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    For our forum's younger members, and for several BBC employees: One pair of pet mice in one year can grow to over 15000.

    Here is a source (I admit I did not check it):
    Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math
    http://life.familyeducation.com/pest-infestation/home-maintenance/47844.html

    Waiting for the origin of this number of 5000 animals!
     
  7. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    it comes from Dr Lesley Dickie, executive director of EAZA, e.g. from this article (relating to the giraffe at Copenhagen) Marius The Giraffe Was Not Alone: Zoos in Europe Kill 5,000 Healthy Animals Annually
    There's obviously a bit of a journalist's-jump in there between saying "every year" and then using examples of animals killed 15 years ago...
     
  8. Pleistohorse

    Pleistohorse Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Wouldn't a significant number of young animals born in the wild fail to survive due to predators, competitors, human intervention, and the stresses of limited habitat?

    Zoo populations and breeding programs seem to mimic that...

    Conservation is about species...not individuals. That said, zoos exist on the whims of public perceptions.

    Even the perceptions of people that try to pet Bison in Yellowstone.
     
  9. overread

    overread Well-Known Member

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    Another thought is that zoos deal with very limited numbers of many animals but must provide not only feed and shelter but also medial care. I suspect many of those "waste" animals move from being simply culled stock to contributing to medical studies. How else will you learn how to operate upon a giraffe to save its life if you've never operated upon one before. There have to be samples and individuals to dissect to educate new generations of vets and to also increase our understanding of the physical nature of these animals to better medicate and care for them.



    That said that they boldly say that its 5000 including tadpoles sounds stupid; or like the newspaper article has seriously miss-represented the value (eg it is talking about euthanasia - which I suspect drastically lowers the value - it could be lower still if we remove any individuals removed due to health concerns and possibly some other criteria too).


    In the end the article is purely trying to show zoos as being evil because of disposal of a waste product; however its a rather deaf argument when every other breeding scheme on the planet also suffers from the same "disposable" problem - even when significant efforts are put into rehoming.
     
  10. Jurek7

    Jurek7 Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Thanks, Chlidonias.

    3000-5000 animals (which mutated into 5000) still seems odd, if it includes also small animals.

    Coming to it, EAZA zoos should loan surplus animals to non-EAZA zoos, as long as the individual animal will have good conditions. It should be easy to design an appropriate agreement. Public does not distinguish between EAZA and non-EAZA zoos, and the latter have the same role of introducing people to animals.
     
  11. Mr. Zootycoon

    Mr. Zootycoon Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    The number is for all healthy animals put down for management reasons,
    so mice, rats, chickens etc. used as food don't count.

    EAZA zoos do sometimes exchange beween non EAZA zoos.
    If a zoos wants to become EAZA it even needs animals from the
    EAZA breeding programs. But mostly the animals given to non EAZA
    zoos are surplus animals that can't find a place within EAZA zoos.
     
  12. TheMightyOrca

    TheMightyOrca Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Eh, canned hunts exist, though they are controversial even among the hunting community.
     
  13. taun

    taun Well-Known Member

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    So can we discount Marius the giraffe and all other animals that are culled for management purposes which are then fed to other animals in the zoo?
     
  14. Newzooboy

    Newzooboy Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I think part of the problem here is the overall concept of the 'wild'.......

    Many people appear to have the opinion that there are vast areas of wild habitat remaining where all wild animals should be.......rather than in zoos

    However, with some exceptions, most 'wild' environments are now severely depleted, fragmented, and in many cases managed.........

    The remaining habitat continues to suffer from increasing and continual pressure from all directions....

    Dumping a load of surplus animals into the 'wild' is not the solution - exactly where would this be?

    Are you really suggesting zoos ship all surplus male Southern African antelopes to Kruger (for example) and just dump them there..........thereby putting pressure on the remaining 'wild' population which is also managed and subject to culling (unless they are very few individuals in the wild, in which case, there are unlikely to be surplus in zoos anyway).

    This point is often missed by anti-zoo people who really should be putting their efforts into preserving the remaining 'wild' environments, or at least gaining an understanding of what the 'wild' actually represents, in the modern world.....we are not living in the 1800s!!!
     
  15. JVM

    JVM Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I think it's preferable to transfer animals between facilities whenever possible. That obviously doesn't work in every instance.