The change of zoos in Brazil through time (Belo Horizonte zoo)

Yes , true , it is incredibly risky to attempt to capture individuals of this species in the wild. These monkeys dwell high up in the forest canopy and so the risk of them falling and being injured and dying during capture attempts are often considerable.

Another issue (Raised by field biologists) with the proposal of capturing this species historically (in the early 1990s), mentioned in Karen Strier's book "Faces in the Forest", is that there are just too many unknown variables in terms of disruptions to social organization of groups and genetics etc.

It is also mentioned that Dr Alicides Pissinatti a renowned primatologist at the Rio primate centre was in favour of capturing the species and bringing them into captivity. This was because he felt that though the risks were significant the threats facing the species in the wild were also enormous and thus assurance populations in captivity were a necessity.

It seems that the arguments against the notion that were raised by field biologists / researchers in the 90's ultimately won out over plans to bring more into captivity (at least up until the present moment). The wild born individuals held at zoos such as Curitiba, Sorocaba and Sao Paulo have all come to these institutions as either animals that were rescued from the illegal pet trade or having being found as orphans in the wild rather than as captures.

I know and have worked with several of the conservationists who work with both species of muriqui and I know that they are dedicated to keeping this species extant in the wild. However, I personally do think that there will come a time when we may need to revisit this debate from the 1990's once more because the situation with anthropogenic threats is worsening every year.

 

Yeah, we unfortunately don't see many people talking about the muriqui's conservation progarames nowadays..(at least not in public or social media, etc) and their situation is getting worse and worse...hope this discution returns soon, otherwise we might loose them forever...

 

Yes, I agree. They have always been a bit of an obscure species for most people both inside and outside of Brazil and they do need much more coverage generated in the media in terms of highlighting their plight.

I've always thought that a decent 1 hour BBC natural history documentary focusing on this species could work wonders in terms of raising awareness and international outreach.

It is a shame because the muriquis are fascinating creatures, unique in so many ways and are really just as loveable and charismatic primates as golden lion tamarins, ring tailed lemurs or mountain gorillas. I know that Karen Strier has done quite a lot to try to try to raise awareness of this species internationally but it seems they are still not very well known.

There are some really good conservation NGO programes in Minas Gerais state working with the Northern Muriqui and run by very dedicated conservationists like Dr Fabiano Melo and Dr Carla Possamai (excellent conservationists in my opinion and just really cool people too !) and they do engage a lot with the public over social media.

But things are really not so good when it comes to the Southern muriqui. There is one particular "conservationist" (who I won't name) in a very prominent position who is absolutely s*** at any kind of outreach and to boot really seems to be much more into himself / looking in the mirror / navel gazing then engaging in any meaningful real world conservation for this species.

 

Ah, yes, I definitely agree with the bbc documentary idea, it would be extremely good to have our muriquis showed to the entire world. And also, unfortunately, as you said, we have a few mercenary "conservation programes" and "activists" that are such hoaxes, and that's very sad... and actually, as sad as these are the sensacionalist activists that are against zoos like a few we have around Brasil that actually know nothing about a zoo's reaal function... but let's leave that to another topic (maybe we could start one later).

Unfortunately never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Fabiano nor Dr. Carla, but I have seen that Fabiano appeared on a live stream with the WAITA non-profit-organization a few days ago... gonna watch this now, don't know how I could lose it

also gonna let the link here in case someone else who speakes portuguese (besides us) wanna watch it

 

Yes totally agree , there are a lot of people like that out there unfortunately.

Awesome ! Haven't watched this yet so I will definitely check this out too!

 

Evening everyone! as today's update for this thread, we'll be talking about the zoo of the beautiful capital of my country: Brasília! yes, if you didn't know, Brazil's capital is the amazing planed city of Brasília, wich already had a zoo before the city was inaugurated. A few animals were brought to be in a few enclosures to entertain the people who were building the structures of the capital, in the end of the 50's; and one of these animals was a very notable asian elephant called Nely. Unfortunately, her life wasn't as respectful as the life of the elephants that live nowadays at the zoo...

Obs: the ancient pictures in this post are from Zoo Brasilia's archive, and the present ones are from my authory

In my trip to Brasilia in the end of last year, the visit to the zoo was one of my main points to see, and when I got back home, I really wanted to know more about it's history (I already knew a bit because I researched before, but got more curious to know more) I researched more, and also took notes about what a few educators told me there at the zoos musem; let's start with the before and after, wich I almost forgot that it's the actual objective of this thread:

1- Elephants:

This is what Nely's exhibit looked like in the early 60's; not enriched, not natural and even dangerous for the public and for the animal. A chain can be seen ataching her to a pole in the center of the exhibit, probably, to avoid the costs of making a safe enclosure.



Nely also past through some public presentations, and was also a vehicle for tours around the zoo for a period of time


Fortunately, she lived enough to enjoy a better exhibit (at least better than her previous conditions) She passed away in 1994.

Her skeleton is nowadays exposed in a museum inside the zoo (sorry for the not very good picture, the zoo was crowded and the musem had not very wide corridors, so I had to hurry up because of the amount of people that would probably run me over if I stayed for too long)



After that, two african elephants arrived: "Bela" and "Babu", who unfortunately never reproduced. In 2008, male african elephant called "Chocolate" arrived to the zoo after he was aprehended from a circus. With him, many other animals were confiscated; between them, a hippo, a white rhino and a llama. As the zoo only counted with one elephant enclosure, and it already contained a male, "Chocolate" was housed in an old caiman exhibit, that passed through some renovations to receive him. It's not a proper home, to say the true, but better than a circus truck... See it below






- Present days main enclosure: Although the exhibit shows an old-fashioned handling area, the outdoor part is really roomy and has enough enrichment. This exhibit now only holds female elephant "Bela", (once "Babu" died in 2018) and is passing through a renovation to receive "Chocolate", the male that I previously mentioned that came from a circus and lives in the temporary enclosure at the zoo. New bareers will be added to the exhibit, and hopefully more grass too.





2 - Big cats/carnivores:

The architecture of these old enclosures are very similar to the old ones of Belo Horizonte zoo I previously posted in this thread. Fortunately, zoo Brasília renovated it's exhibits in the 80's, and coincidently, they're very similar to Belo Horizonte's present ones.( Click here if you wanna see the before and after of Belo Horizonte zoo's exhibits too: The change of zoos in Brazil through time (Belo Horizonte zoo) ) I don't know wich zoo firstly had this idea, but they surely used similar blueprints, for the old ones, and also for the new ones. (Both institutions have very similar architecture at all)

Old lion enclosure at the zoo:




Old jaguar enclosure:



- Present days big carnivore exhibits: Coves with considerable size (visually, they seem smaller than the ones in B. Horizonte, besides very alike)

Zoo Brasilia no longer keeps lions, but they now hold in these cove enclosures a spectacled bear, jaguars, cougars and even hamadryas baboons (wich are not big carnivores nor big cats, but were housed it one of the empty exhibits) The zoo also housed a couple of white bengal tigers in two of those cove exhibits, but they both died recently.


Spectacled bear cove



Jaguar cove



Cougar cove


Continues in the following post because of images limit

 

Hamadryas baboon cove (passing through structural renovations)



Empty tiger coves






3 - Giant river otters: I already wrote a bit about Brasilia zoo's giant otter reproduction program at another thread by Onychorhynchus coronatus, so if you wanna know more about it, click here: An overview of Brazilian zoos and their specialities

In a nutshell, the zoo keeps these animals since the 70's, has the world's record of number of births of this species (68 babies were born there since they started keeping them), and their present exhibit is pretty modern. This is the one that less changed in size (it has almost the same since the begining of the giant otter keeping there) but changed a lot in ambientation and immersion. Check out the before and after:



This is the previous giant river otter home (picture is small, but we can have an idea of how it was)



This is how it looks like today

 

I really like how some of the enclosures now look and while not perfect they are a drastic improvement over how things used to be. You can definitely see the influence of BH zoo in terms of the landscaping and size of the enclosures too.

 

yeah, that's true! And I also liked what they did to the hamadryas baboons, cause they used to live in an island, like in Goiânia, but now (since 2014/15, not sure) they have this better exhibit, with handling area and everything else. I think this exhibit they occupy nowadays housed orangutans in the past; and this orangutan went to the GAP "sanctuary". Not sure, but I remember that I read this some time ago...

 

Yes, I agree , that looks like quite a nice enclosure for hamadryas baboons and they seem to have a lot more space to use than most zoos give over to them (usually this species gets a bit of a raw deal in zoos in this region of the world).

About the orangutan, yes, I think I remember a bit about that incident. The GAP "sanctuary" , well the less I say about that total joke of a place the better.

 

Yeah, I definitely don't enjoy their methods... that's not a serious animal keeping place for me... The worse is the way they criticize other institution's exhibits and spaces provided for the animals, while they only give the animals a lawn with a few climbing structures. Not natural, not enriched, and I heard they allow the animals to reproduce there. I think they don't even know the function they were supposed to have. actually, two chimpanzees even escaped from there one time, am I wrong?

But returning to zoo Brasilia, yeah, I definitely think Hamadryas baboons do not receive the attention they diserve in many zoos around here... I bet Brasilia zoo's exhibit for these monkeys is one of the best in the country.

 

No, you are not wrong at all David. There have indeed been a lot of issues with GAP and their "methods" (or total lack of) both historically and in the present.

GAP are an "animal rights" organization (and a very extremist one at that) rather than a conservation minded institution (yet they do claim to be "conservationists").

I've written about GAP and their leader Pedro Ynterian (and his unsavoury past and present) quite a bit in this forum.

North American Orangutan Population

Animal rights group buying french zoo [Zoo de Pont-Scorff]

Zoologico Municipal Sorocaba - Chimp - ZooChat

 

I totally agree with you about Brasilia zoo.

I think that the changes to the zoo by remodelling the enclosures in the style of those at BH was ultimately the best move for the animals and I honestly think that a lot of other zoos in this country could really benefit from doing the same.

However, I do wonder whether the constraints of site space (and of course funding ) at a lot of other institutions would limit any attempts to remodel current enclosures in this style.

 

Oh, I'm definitely gonna read what you wrote about it. I have never seen GAP as a good institution at all...

And yes, I bet many zoos don't have enough space to make such big renovations... BH and Brasilia are lucky to be very roomy institutions. Zoos like them could become totally modern zoos if the right amount of money (and fiscalization) was applied to them. Unfortunately, we have some zoos around our country that have almost no possibility of increasing the sizes of the enclosures...

Also, I would like to write a bit about Riozoo (now bioparque do Rio) in this thread, because, from what I can see, they're making such gigantic changes on their structures. Although, I have seen some biologists (and professionals of the area in general) saying that they have been doing more marketing (like building exhibits and areas that are beautiful for the public) than real needed changes (specially related to real conservation). I personally like how their new structures are looking, and hope they will give the right focus to the conservation programmes. What do you think about Rio zoo's renovation?

 

Totally agree, funding is becoming very tight (it already was before the pandemic but now even more so) and even the Sao Paulo Zoo is now under the threat of privatization.

I think the renovation of Rio Zoo is a very good idea (lets be honest things did need to be improved) and I think it will hopefully lead to the construction of larger and more naturalistic enclosures that are ultimately much better for the welfare of the animals kept there.

However, like you I really do hope that attention is also given to their existing ex-situ programs for native species and especially as I think this is something that can often get obscured or neglected when it comes to these big renovations of zoos.

The problem with these kind of zoo revamps (as you've already mentioned in your comment) is that an institution going through these sweeping changes can easily lose sight of what is important and become more like a theme park than a conservation ark or centre of education which is what zoos are supposed to be.

 

Yes, for sure something had to change in Riozoo. their exhibits were some of the most old fashioned in the country. The jaguar exhibit I saw at the tiny city zoo of Foz do Iguaçu was better than the one Rio zoo had, (I have never been to Riozoo, but I compared what I've personaly seen in Foz with pictures I saw from Rio) and for an important city like Rio de Janeiro, having an institution in that situation was a shame.

My worries about zoo privatizations are, as you also mentioned, the big focus the company that assumes the institution will give to the profit, and maybe forget about conservation and the real purposes of the zoological institution. Besides that, we also have the fact that the companies probably won't keep the same employees the zoo had when it was public, and some good professionals may have their work interrupted... At least in therms of exhibits, the Cataratas group is surely making an excellent work in the new bioparque; let's hope they keep and improve the other pilars of a modern zoo...

 

Totally agree with regards to it being a necessary change.

Privatization is a double edged sword for sure and I also worry about zoos that go down that route becoming more driven by reaping profits than on the bigger picture of conservation and environmental education.

True also that there is a human tragedy to it too. It can lead to high staff turnovers and the loss of very valuable workers who have often worked their entire lives there.

To go back to the subject of BH zoo, how is it doing at the moment ? is it similarly under the threat of privitization ? and has it reopened to the public yet ?

 

I'm quite sure that here in BH the privatization issues of the city hall fortunately don't involve the zoo. I say fortunately because I honestly don't think we need an enormous amount of money to make the needed improvements in the institution, so it's not worth it to privatizate and run the risk of ruining the good conservation programmes and losing the good employees we already have. Not saying we have nothing to improve, cause I definitely think the small cats area needs to pass through a total renovation, and also continue some started renovations that never finished, but if you understand me, I think it would "cost" much less for the city hall to pay for the needed changes than to run the risks of bad administrations...

That's also what I think about São Paulo zoo... what do you think about it?

 

How common of a thing was this back then?

 

That's really sad, isn't it? From what I know, Brasilia zoo is the only case of this kind in Brazil (in a zoo, of course, because circuses made even worse things) But in Belo Horizonte zoo, around the 1960's, there were circus presentation inside the zoo. See below a presentation of the Moscow circus in BH zoo's bird square:



Very contradictory for nowadays, and fortunately both Belo Horizonte and Brasilia zoo are now some of the most serious and respected institutions of their kind in Brazil.