Fact File 004 - Zoos A Conservation Tool?

So it is a bank holiday weekend currently in the UK and thanks to that I was able to get to West Midlands Safari Park and Cotsworld wildlife park this weekend so because of this today's fact file will be based around Zoos.

• Zoos commit a lot of time money and effort towards the conservation of certain endangered species, and in some cases without the input from Zoos many of these species would either be extinct or nearer extinction. However many endangered species aren’t represented in breeding schemes (95% of threatened birds, 0.6% of threatened amphibians and only 3.5% of all threatened species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species). These numbers are extremely low. It is important to remember that these number can never be 100% due to factors such as space and the fact that some species don’t lend themselves to captivity.

• Zoos can cause unusual problems for captive animals. This is because they are a collection of animals from all over the world and most of which don’t usually ever come into contact with each other. Therefore it is possible for the transfer of new and unusual diseases and parasites to be passed between animals. A classic example of this was when Asian and African elephants were kept in the same enclosures many of the Asian elephants would die as a type of elephant herpes  would be passed from host African elephants to the Asian ones, which were unable to survive the infection unlike African elephants.

• Zoos are a great source of education for all generations, everyone remembers their childhood trip to the zoo with either their families or school trips. In fact 175 million people visit zoos every year, and this creates an income of $US 16 Billion annually from all zoos and aquariums worldwide.

• Finally many Zoos are trying to change the image created by some other institutions which act as money sources. In fact in Australia four Zoos (Taronga, Perth, Adelaide and Victoria zoo) are all acting as non-profit organisations as when the running costs are recouped all profit is put into conservation and welfare schemes.

So Zoos help and also neglect some issues but overall thanks to greater control and restrictions on animal welfare I believe they are a extremely useful conservation and education tool. What do you think?

Thanks for reading!

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