PRIVATE COLLECTIONS...those are the operative words there. The ones the Phoenix Zoo got and began breeding were WILD. From the wild. Not ones living in captivity.
Not all of the Arabian oryxes kept at Phoenix Zoo in the 1960s came from the wild. London Zoo sent a female, Caroline, there.
Not quite true; one of the founder members of the Arabian oryx herd at Phoenix Zoo was the female "Caroline" donated by London Zoo. EDIT: sorry "Dassie rat"; our posts crossed
The Memphis zoo is currently leading the challenge to save, breed, and restore the population of the Louisiana Pine Snake (Pituophis ruthveni).
I know the Fort Worth zoo is breeding and researching a lot on the spot tailed earless lizard, a very under-researched species. They said they do not know status of them in the wild but don't think it's good. They keep all them behind the scenes in a small building behind the red wolves (you can kinda see it when looking through the brush of the exhibit) in Texas Wild. I do not know of any other zoos doing this.
I think Memphis zoo is more influential on breeding the Mississippi Gopher Frog than the Louisiana pine snake, since several Southern zoos breed them. I know at one point the Fort Worth Zoo took many of them (From other zoos, maybe even Memphis) into a small building (Same as the spot tailed earless lizard) to breed them, so Memphis Zoo is not alone in the Louisiana pine snake.
Everything you said is correct. However, things have very recently changed or are in the process of changing reguarding the Louisiana Pine Snake. Memphis Zoo is the headquarters of the SSP and built, or is building, a new off-exhibit facility for breeding and research with funds from the U.S. Forest Service. The plan is to move all the snakes in other zoos to Memphis where I assume they will be DNA typed and matched into breeding pairs, then dispersed to just 4 zoos for breeding. If I recall correctlly, they are Fort Worth Zoo, Ellen Trout Zoo, Audubon Institute in New Orleans, and Memphis Zoo will retain some, with the goal to release the offspring back into the wild. I assume the reason for this is that the breeding and/or reinterduction was not very sucessful with these rare snakes spread out among several zoos. I don't know how far along they are in this process right now. Here's a link to an article about it in the Memphis Buisness Journal http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2016/06/07/zoo-plans-snake-breeding-center.html
Perth has a long track record of managing breeding programs without (much if any) assistance from other Aust zoos - numbat, western quoll, dibbler, shark bay mouse, orange-belly and white-belly frogs, western ground parrots, carnaby cockatoos and lancelin island skinks. The turtle is the most famous one however. It does help that PZ is working specifically with species very local to the region too.
Thank you. The keeper breeding them in Fort Worth said all Louisiana pine snakes would come to Fort Worth when showing me the house where they are bred. This was in the Summer, and when going to Memphis zoo this winter, I was told by a volunteer they were breeding them, but nothing more.