Zoo Conservation in Latin America

About the gorillas in Rio de Janeiro, they were from an American circus, which made presentations in the city, they weren't exhibited at the zoo, my mistake. There were two of them: a male named Gargantua II and a female named Madame Totó.

 

Yes, definitely I agree with you on this David.

Whenever I see those ape enclosures at SP zoo I can't help but think how good they would be for the blond capuchins or the woolly monkeys.

The woolly monkeys are a largeish monkey that is pretty active and brachiates with its tail and arms so the chimp enclosure furnished with more climbing opportunities would be a radical improvement over their current enclosure (which isn't awful but isn't amazing either). I think they would be much happier in a larger open topped enclosure like the one I mentioned.

The blond capuchin monkeys really deserve a larger enclosure rather than the island that they currently have and I also believe they should be showcased by the zoo because of their rarity and conservation status. I think they would also be so much more happier in the current orangutang enclosure too.

 

Ah, yes, I get it. These gorillas are a quite famous name from those times, aren't them? I didn't know they made presentations in Rio.

 

Yes, these gorillas were famous. They made presentations in Rio in the early 1960's (in 1962, iIrc).

 

Yeah, these would be really some great improvements; definitely. The wooly monkey exhibit in São Paulo is indeed ok, but could be way better.

These Ideas would really bring some nice improvements for the native species in there.

 

Yes, I can definitely imagine those woolly monkeys enjoying an enclosure like that.

 

If feel it would be a loss if South American zoos were simply turned into native species zoos. People is SA want to see world's wildlife too. What if zoos in Europe showed only European rare animals?

Probably SA can look into Central Europe, which managed to modernize its zoos within about two decades. Generally, big city zoos are popular with public, and it is possible to convince city councils and sponsors to pay for new exhibits.

 

I agree with you. I really enjoy seeing exotic animals at the zoo. In my opinion, zoos shouldn't restrict themselves to the conservation of species native to their respective countries/regions. If zoological gardens did that since the beginning, many animal species native (and sometimes, even endemic) to underdeveloped/war-torn areas would be extinct by now.

 

@Jurek7 We had this conversation quite some time ago in the "Pandas in Brazil" thread if you remember.

I made my points which I believe are sound on why I believe the exhibition and conservation of native species over exotics is more important in SA so I'm not going to go over the old ground we covered in that debate.

Ultimately many zoos in Latin America will probably continue to keep exotic species for the forseeable future, why ?

Well... because of mediocrity and an unwillingness to change with the times, embrace reality and take risks.

This will often be to the detriment of the native species which are usually not afforded the same allocation of resources which is detrimental to ex-situ conservation and definitely do not receive the same interest from visitors which is detrimental to education.

I believe that this is personally very harmful practice and a mediocre form of management of zoos in this region of the world and I feel this particularly strongly as we face the enormity of the current biodiversity crisis in this mega-biodiverse region of the world.

However, I am not a zoo curator (and nor do I want to be) so whatever I say about how I wish zoos would be run here for conservation and education doesn't really matter does it?

 

I'll also have to agree with you, Onychorhynchus coronatus, as we are passing through a great biodiversity crisis and we're facing several problems involving the environment in Latin America. So, conservation-wise, I think that at the moment, we should focus a bit more on endangered species that are native to our region, instead of focusing mostly on ABC/exotic animals.

 

@Enzo and @Jurek7 , I agree with you guys too, but what me and @Onychorhynchus coronatus are worried about is that zoos underestimate the importance of the native species conservation programs. Most of the zoos in Brazil have limited resources and budgets, so what I'm saying is that we must try not be spreading gorillas around the country to start expensive and laborious breeding programs with them, once we already have an institution that has the needed expertise to do so.( I think you understood that I mentioned gorillas just to give an example, but I'm involving all the exotic species here.)
I'm in favor of the zoos that have a better economic condition to try to keep some programs for exotic species too. It's extremely educative to know more about and observe the biodiversity of the world; but I also don't think our zoos must look for more different exotic species to bring in and spend more money with.
If it depended on me, all the zoos would surely have enormous quantity of resources to keep and breed as many different native and exotic species they could; but my opinion is based mostly in the situation we are into nowadays, not in what I would like to happen.

For now, that's just what we have.

 

That's what I'm talking about. Instead on focusing on the conservation of ABC/exotic animals at the moment, Latin American zoos should focus more on the conservation of species native to the Americas (Many animals native to South and Central America are also native to North America).

 

Well it is a very complicated subject indeed and of course everyone has their own opinion on this topic and everyone is entitled to it.

Perhaps I am quite fixed on native species in South American zoos because I am a conservation biologist and not a zoo professional.

I've met plenty of zoo professionals here who do want to have and keep breeding exotic charismatic megafauna and firmly disagree with me that the emphasis should be on native species.

What I'm trying to say is everyone is ultimately entitled to their opinion on this matter but I do think we need to keep in mind some of the bigger socio-economic and conservation related issues here in this debate about exotic species vs native in zoos.

 

If we exported/traded some specimens native to Latin America with other countries, probably things would be very different now, and we'd probably be able to focus more on the conservation of exotic species.

 

I just think the problem is in some ways socio-economic and that the conservation of exotic species in Latin American zoos could for the forseeable future only play a very secondary and unimportant role in overall ex-situ conservation.

Brazilian, Mexican, Colombian and Argentinian zoos are just never going to have the resources or infastructure compared to zoos in countries such as Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Spain, France, the United States, Australia or New Zealand. That is just the reality of how things are within this region in terms of economics and development.

Maybe it is important to help assist in a small way ex-situ gorilla, elephant, rhino or orangutang conservation, right ?

Yes, maybe, I'll grant that. However, meanwhile if we take a look around us here in Brazil we have the Pantanal, Amazon, Atlantic rainforest and Cerrado that are burning and being destroyed wholesale for agricultural conversion.

In wider Latin America so is the Chaco in Paraguay / Argentina / Bolivia. The cloud, Pacific and montane forests of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Central America and Mexico too are suffering the same fate too.

This is the most biodiverse region of the world in almost every sense and nowhere not Africa, North America, Australia, South-East Asia, South Asia has the incredible natural riches of South and Central America and Mexico.

With the ex-situ conservation of native species in zoos on the other hand (many of which are not kept outside of Latin America or indeed will ever likely be), well, that could be a strong point and something that zoos across the region could take a pride and initiative in doing.

 

Yes, this is what I mostly focus in my opinion. As I said, if the lack of resources wasn't a problem to our zoos, then the best to do would be trying to keep all the possible species we could find, and develop wonderful programs with them all. but that's too far form being the case of our zoos, so priorities need to be identified and focused.

 

Well, I wouldn't say never, because there surelly are many dedicated people working in order to increase the quality of our zoological institutions every day. About the available resources, I agree, but nice infrastructure does not only depend from big amount of money. Of course it's extremely important to have it, but what I mean is that many good ideas can come true from low budget projects.

So I genuinely believe we have some institutions here that can be surelly compared in quality to some good european/north american ones (don't know enough about insitutions in these regions to say equally positioned), and that we are increasing our quality to become better each day.

 

Of course, I'm mentioning brazilian institutions, once I don't have enough knowledge about all the latin american zoos to say so about'em.

 

I wouldn't say never either.

Look for example at the brown hyenas in Mexican zoos, a near threatened African species that has almost disappeared entirely from European and American zoos due to a lack of interest but there it is going strong in Mexico.

I'm always impressed by what good zoos in this region of the world manage to achieve on budgets that would make a zoo director in the USA or Europe have a nervous breakdown.

I always admire the hard-work and innovation, self sacrifice and commitment to conservation that I've seen over and over again in colleagues working in these institutions in Mexico and Brazil.

But we do have to be very realistic here and pragmatic (because we can scarcely afford to be anything other than this when it comes to this issue) and I just truly question what is the point in turning zoos here into models of European or American zoos?

Why waste precious resources trying to build up unnecessary captive breeding programes for gorillas, elephants and pandas (when the Europeans, South-Africans, Chinese and Americans have that covered) as native biodiversity vanishes into extinction?

 

Yes, I agree with you, being the budgets around here so low most of the times, I'm in favor of keeping only the exotic species that are already held, and that are in working breeding programs. I consider very important, for zoos here that have the possibility, to hold some exotic species to do so, this way also helping in their conservation, besides providing nice environmental education and knowledge about biodiversity of other parts of the world. So what I wanna emphasize is, in my opinion, it wouldn't be good to bring much more exotic species to be kept in our zoos, but make good use of the individuals that are already around here and try to help the preservation of their species too.

Of course, we have to analyze each case very well. Giving São Paulo zoo's example, wich we were discussing, I doubt the institution would be interested in and available to elaborate a whole new breeding program for bornean orangutans, so, when it's arrived the time for "Sansão" to complete his life cycle, it would be viable to unphase orangutans at the institution and start keeping another species in his exhibit; preferably a native one, like blond capuchins, for example, as you mentioned. In the case of the chimpanzees, thinking for the conservation point, they are actually breeding quite often, so it would be less viable to unphase them for now indeed.