Zoo Inventory for North America (American Zootierliste)?

There was someone from the UK, going to do one but it's all gone quiet, so I suspect it's died a death just like many of his ideas. Actually thinking about none of his ideas have happened!

 

It could be a little difficult to list all the species with numbers and a lot of places in USA. But, if done. It would be an amazing work.

 

No.

 

With a little teamwork Zoochaters could make a fairly accurate animal database of North American zoos. Certainly few species were missing, but not worse than e.g. some obscure bird parks in Europe. Just suppose:
- admins of zootierliste.de added North American zoos to the database, or somebody in North America asked for a clone of the database and populated it with American zoo names
- Zoochat members written info about their observation of zoo animals
- somebody with access to ZIMS dumped data into it
- somebody made a script extracting animal names from zoo websites and Zoochat.
Am I missing something?

 

I suspect the (sometimes vast) distance between zoochatters and collections would mean all but the largest collections would be visited quite infrequently meaning that details of most collections would be a snapshot in time rather than an up to date species list.

There's some inaccuracies around lesser-visited European collections (I sometimes characterise ZTL as an elderly relative with faulty memory, good source of information but occasionally a little off). I can only imagine this problem would be magnified considerably with US collections.

 

Is it just me or does someone else think Zoochat just make something a bit like Zootierliste for American zoos? I know it's a mammoth task but split between a few hundred volunteers, it might not be so bad...
Sorry if it's a stupid suggestion, it just feels like there is a gap and it would be great if it were filled in, and I can't think of anywhere better placed to do it than here. I'm not American but I suspect the job would require combing through threads, websites and pictures to find species, so theoretically anyone here could do it.

I'm not sure about the level of ability required to make a website like Zootierliste (I'm sure it is far above my own) but would such a project be feasible? Apologies if this has already been asked here.

 

I am looking forward to what others say but if it's feasible, I would be happy to help.

 

Oh, I've just spotted this thread: American Zootierliste?
Perhaps with a big effort and development over the years we could manage to pull it off? Of course it would be slightly inaccurate, but surely better than nothing...

 

Yeah, and also instead of starting with the bigger zoos, we could start with the medium and small ones that we could easily manage and take account of species.

 

I assume the issue with the smaller ones is that:

1. They don't have as many members near them so less news on them from that perspective
2. They don't have great websites so probably don't have nearly thorough species lists
3. Their websites probably wouldn't publish much news - and probably only about large mammals if that.
4. Fewer photos in the gallery so less to go by.

I really don't know if it's feasible, I was just wondering if it is worth giving it a go if the concensus is that it might be possible.

 

Another thing about American zoos is that they dont have much public information on what they have and such, not many do published stocklists and such.

 

It'd be horribly inaccurate People already make so many assumptions on what zoos do and do not keep and that's with US zoos not having the same transparency are most European zoos...

~Thylo

 

That's unfortunate.
So not feasible?

 

To be fair, a lot of species lists have been developed on here for American zoos, a few of which I manage. I try to verify holdings as best I can to avoid inaccuracies - I wouldn't say these lists are "horribly inaccurate". That being said, Americans are less likely to visit or be familiar with the on-display collections beyond their own local zoos, and we don't have locals for the majority of places so many of them would end up getting outdated... I think it depends on the species, how inclusive a facility list you wanted to make, and whether you wanted to count bts species, but yeah I agree that it would be more difficult and less accurate than ZTL.

 

I think that even if some of the holdings are inaccurate, just the sheer fact of having a central database would help tremendously and would probably encourage people to note what they see in zoos to potentially update said database. I think that with the help of visitors updating this latter, like on what ztl relies, it could be a useful ressource, even if it's just for mammals or birds at first for ex.

I think the problem resides moreso in the fact that you need to create a website which not many of us can/are willing to do

 

I think an American or Asian zootierliste can be self-propagating. Once it exist, it will encourage more people to update it. One can also add a date of the last major update for the information.

Zootierliste itself is also not accurate. Many small local zoos have not updated information.

 

Here's an idea: every zoochatter should go to every zoo within 50 miles of where they live and write down a list of species at those collections.

 

That'll still be inaccurate since that relies heavily on the thoroughness and reliability of the individual. Also this is kind of a large task to expect everyone to do..

~Thylo