Trends in European zoo collections in the 21st century

Zoos are constantly in flux and nothing changes as quickly as the zoo collection itself. Species come and go all the time and whereas not every zoo will open a new exhibit every year, the species collection will change every year. These mutations make up the bulk of Zoochat news and discussions. On Zoochat the the arrival of quokkas in Europe is applauded whereas the loss of the last lesser grison is mourned. But with so many changes happening across the continent it is hard to keep track and easy to lose the overview of what is happening. I have the feeling that there are multiple narratives around, which are all based more on assumptions than on real data.


@LaughingDove , Europe's newest arrival: the quokka


The goal

This thread started as a pet project in which I was simply curious about which species were the “winners” and “losers” in the current zoo landscape. So which type of species would thrive in a21st century zoo and what would be the reason to phase out others. I quickly realised that to answer such questions looking at the species present now is not enough and the gain and loss of species on a continental scale would need to be incorporated. This meant creating an overview of species newly held this century, species lost this century, species increasing in popularity and species losing popularity. Fortunately we have www.zootierliste.de in Europe which has amassed a gigantic database on current and former holdings, which is the only way to make such a project work. It might not always be fully accurate (more on that later), but the amount of information that is present means it is possible to undertake such an effort for mammals and birds. For reptiles, amphibians and fish, data quality is however too low, especially on former holdings, to be included. Because of data quality issues I have also limited myself to the 21st century, but there are other reasons for that too, which I will explain in a later post.

@TeaLovingDave has already created 2 threads about species lost since 1990/2000 and while there will be some overlap with his threads, this endeavour is by no means meant as a competitor. The goal of those threads is to a large extent geared to creating a photographic library of species kept in Europe at some point in the recent past. This thread will aim at describing trends in European zoo collections and trying to understand those trends and the mechanisms behind them.


@Maguari , With the death of "Happy" in 2020 Amazon river dolphins have disappeared from Europe, probably for good


What is Europe?

For the purposes of this thread I use a somewhat narrow definition of Europe by excluding Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey from the survey. Cyprus, which is an Asian country despite being an EU member, is also excluded. I did however include the Canary Islands, which are geographically African, but for all other purposes European and a popular holiday destination for Europans (and zoochatters). The reason to exclude Russia, Belarus & Ukraine is twofold: (1) I have more doubts about data quality for these countries and (2) they are hardly ever visited by zoochatters anyway, which makes them less interesting when comparing perceived trends with real trends. Zoos in those countries also have a slightly different mentality compared to many other European countries with imports of wild caught species being more widespread still. If I refer to Europe or “the continent” in this thread, it is to the narrow definition, not the Wikipedia definition.


@alexkant Currently present in Russia, but absent in Europe, the Philippine tarsier


It's survey time

In the past months I have created a monster excel sheet with all mammal and bird species that have been present in Europe in the 21st century and by now all mammal texts have been written. This is promising to be a monster thread, with the mammal texts alone surpassing all I wrote for “Europe’s 100 must see exhibits”. However before we start with the family and species accounts I would like to ask you to fill in a small survey. It seems every zoochatter has an opinion about collection management and I am curious to see what you think has been going on in terms of European zoo collections this century. The survey can be found here:

https://forms.gle/gz85frchqFGJNcNm7

The results of the survey won’t be used against you and it can be completed anonymously. The results willvserve as a benchmark of what some of the perceived changes are. These can then be compared to the changes that have actually took place.

To give enough people a chance to fill in the survey I will wait 2 weeks before starting with the family and species accounts. In the meantime I will post some more information on the methods used in the thread and the format in which families and species will be covered. So fasten your seatbelts, we’re going on an adventure!


@Therabu An aardvark on a victory stroll. In the past 30 years the number of aardvarks in Europe has grown fourfold

 

I undersand ha his isn't the purpose of the thread, but could I know more about these? Recent wild-caught imports, or are some facilities actually having success keeping/breeding them? (Although I assume the former, always good to hope for the best..)

 

Your ability to pick up interesting subjects is unrivaled @lintworm ! Sent my vote, mainly based on personal observations. Looking forward to the future posts!

 

I was just asking yesterday on the discord if there will be any more thread of the year candidates this year and of course a lintworm thread drops the next day.

Very much looking forward to this!

 

I don’t know if you knowingly omitted Turkey in this sentence despite previously mentioning it in the same paragraph, but I can assure you that these reasons are also applicable to Turkey as well.


I am both excited and anxious to see the trends of holdings of species I like. Let’s see how this goes.

 

It's exciting to predict what will be unveiled on this thread. Bring it on!

 

You would probably be interested in some analysis I conducted for my masters thesis; looking at the factors that could be used to predict commonly housed EAZA and AZA species having a husbandry guideline and/or breeding programme. Whilst I did not look at trends, as it was a snapshot of 2022 data, looking at the taxonomic group composition differences between association was very interesting, especially when considering the breeding programme and husbandry guideline species.

There are some projects very similar to yours currently being conducted using Species360 data and should produce some exciting results. Otherwise, this looks to be a brilliant thread!

 

Species360 has the advantage of number of individuals being kept at a zoo at any given point and thus has an advantage from a quantitative standpoint. But from what I have understood Species360 former holdings are very incomplete. I have used Species360 requests to check some Zootierliste entries and I noticed taxonomy is really a mess there too, so I am glad I use Zootierliste. An additional bonus of zootierliste is that all the small places are represented too.

I think both datasets will yield somewhat different answers, but overall for the purposes of this thread Zootierliste is superior . If some publications come out of what you mention, it would be interesting to see.

 

Yeah, no way I'm gonna be able to copy this one.

Best of luck with this ambitious endeavor!

 

It is not entirely impossible

 

That was a nice side effect . Once this is done (which will take a while), I do have something for you...

 

Perhaps not, but without a proper zootierliste equivalent it would be beyond difficult to get accurate data for US collections and I'm not ready for that headache. I have other ideas down the line, but nothing nearly as long form as this.

 

Quite simply because most sources treat Cyprus not as part of Europe, this includes the UN, Wikipedia, the CIA factbook (as part of Middle East), and most importantly Jetpunk .

That the Canary Islands are included is because they are one of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain and thus are politically the same as Andalusia, Aragon, etc. You could then make the argument that we should also include French Guiana, Reunion and other French overseas departments if one were to be absolutely coherent. But it is already clear that my definition of Europe for the purposes of this thread is incoherent and as such I do include the Canary Islands, but only Metropolitan France. There are no political motives attached to any choice.

Instead of debating incoherent geography I suggest you use your energy in filling out the survey:

https://forms.gle/gz85frchqFGJNcNm7

 

I just took a stab in the dark

 

So far 17 people have filled in the survey and I have seen some answers that hit the bulls eye, but it also shows everybody will be surprised at some point(s).

But I was hoping for a few more replies so we could start the thread with what the zoochat community expects to see:

https://forms.gle/gz85frchqFGJNcNm7

I couldn't find much information online the EARAZA Yearbook listed 1.1 as being present on Moscow and 5.3 in Zoopark Limpopo in Nizhny Novgorod. For both zoos they are listed as Tarsius spec. But the origin isn't clear and despite the fact that all tarsiers are CITES listed no imports to Russia pop up in the CITES Trade Database in the past 35 years, so the origin is probably dubious or confiscated animals.

 

Also Europe is a cultural construct being geographically connected to Asia and all definitions of where it starts and ends are debatable to some degree or other.

I wouldn’t agree that most sources treat Cyprus as being outside Europe.

Cyprus is a member of the Council of Europe, membership of which is “in principle open only to states whose national territory lies wholly or partly in Europe” and the European Union (The Treaty on the European Union states that any European country may apply for membership if it respects the democratic values of the EU and is committed to promoting them. Non-European states are not eligible to join as Morocco found out in 1987).

Cyprus is a member of UEFA and the European Olympic Committees and European sporting federations.

But crucially, Cyprus is culturally and geopolitically European in identity and orientation. So in my opinion, it really doesn’t make sense to say that Cyprus is Asia, for the purposes of this discussion.

 

While you can indeed argue Europe is a purely cultural construct, there is a generally accepted geographical definition of Europe and that was the basis for this thread. That definition uses the Ural, Caucasus, Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Bosporus as boundaries. That excludes Cyprus, but also Armenia (which is also a member of the Council of Europe), Israel (which is also a member of European sporting associations) and Australia (which also competes in the European song festival)

But in the end it really does not matter for this thread and I suggest we keep it at that as one could debate this endlessly and Cyprus would remain a grey area.

 

With respect, you brought it up first and there are clearly a great many sources, not least the country itself which regard Cyprus as firmly part of Europe.