Engleski A - 2023. jesen, reading 2.

Where are zoos going?

As a child I often went to the zoo. For some reason my parents thought it safe to let a bunch of unruly children walk around the zoo while they had coffee and cake with the other parents. Some of the kids often dared me to do things that did not make me feel comfortable, and although we spent time together, we didn’t really get to share our experiences and interests. But at least I didn’t feel restricted like when we used to play in the street, and although I lacked the patience to take part in the educational activities, I did watch the animals closely and tried to communicate with them. Twenty years later, after being captives of the pandemic for two years, I asked some experts whether our pleasure in seeing wild animals up close is worth the price of their captivity.

“Education is not an insignificant reason for a well-run zoo’s existence,” says Dan Atkins. “People ought to be able to see what an animal looks, smells and sounds like.” He does confirm though that some animals fare better than others in zoos. “Modern aquariums can be considered largely successful, with their vast tanks in which you can see whole communities of different species living together. By contrast, polar bears, big birds of prey and large hunting mammals like lions are not suitable for being kept in zoos – unless they are being threatened in the wild, which is now becoming a reality.”

“I am campaigning vigorously for a sharp acceleration in the return of captive animals, such as cheetahs, to the wild and, ultimately, the closure of all zoos,” comments Alina Dawson, an expert on wild cats. “Soon it will be the first time that cheetahs born in captivity have left the UK for rewilding in Africa. There are only about 7,000 cheetahs remaining on the planet,” she says. “This reintroduction – to a reserve in Mount Camdeboo, in South Africa – is important because it will help to support the small proportion of cheetahs we have in that country.”

Darren Jones, from the Zoological Society, acknowledges on the other hand that the releases of zoo-bred animals into the wild are not a frequent occurrence. This is how he interprets it: “The truth is that many ‘wild’ areas have been degraded by agriculture, their animals threatened by disease or squeezed into tiny areas with no way of reaching potential mates without coming into conflict with humans. This makes the reintroduction of animals much more complicated than people might realise.” He adds: “Not many animals living in zoos are under threat and they are there simply to provide more information on their species.”

Another idea that has recently emerged, of closing zoos to boost funds for conservation, is challenged by an expert from Atis Zoo, whose organisation has an annual budget of £40m. “That money is raised virtually entirely from people paying at our doors to get in,” he says. “After you deduct our running costs, we have around £1.5m that is spent on government programmes for studying chimpanzees on site in Nigeria and reintroducing black rhinos to Uganda. If we simply closed our doors, our funding of these projects would come to an immediate halt.”

In the end, it seems these efforts at conservation may prove futile in a world challenged by climate change, habitat loss and swelling numbers of humans. Although most say the educational function of zoos is no justification for life in captivity, they also agree that virtual zoos are a poor substitution for experiencing live animals. Nevertheless, it seems that zoos do have a role to play as arks for threatened wildlife.