Do we need so many zoos ...

21 August

Sorry I’m late with today’s blog but we just watched a recorded show on telly I wanted to express my views on, here’s goes …

Quite recently I recorded a Horizon programme off telly, this one asking the question whether zoos were facing extinction or not. Many zoos have been getting a hammering from so many animal welfare groups over the years, including one from the RSPCA. As with so many areas where critics stand up and shout that the critics are wrong, this RSPCA reports was also attacked. However, it wasn’t the report that was attacked, no, it was the work of the RSPCA that was attacked.

That is the same thing I’ve noticed happening in other areas where reports are critical of the work/role of an organisation. Many times authors of reports are attacked for what they do or did rather than the report they are reacting against. Perhaps it’s thought that by trying to discredit the author’s work, it will diminish the negative report and leave them to go along with their what they are doing and collection their pay cheques just as normal.

As far as I see it, that really is the issue here folks. A zoo gets a poor report/review visitor numbers might drop and that I might impact of salaries, and that can’t be allowed to happen can it? Don’t forget, in some parts of the world, backing for zoos come from big business, and they want their money to come back to them with interest. That also will be related to salaries too. Top and bottom, the animals come far down the pecking order where this happens.

Do you happen to remember a film called Free Willy? It’s the story of teenage runaway who becomes attached to an orca in a sea aquarium. How old is that film now; well, that was 23 years ago. That orca that ‘played’ Willy had his dorsal fin flopping over. Questions were asked about why it was like that. The answer was basically it happens with all orcas in captivity. ‘Willy’, by the way, died in 2003 … http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1449436/Whale-star-of-Free-Willy-dies-after-return-to-wild.html His death was after he had been released back into the wild but he remained dependant on humans for his food and become too ill to eat and died of pneumonia. Sad eh …

In 2010 another orca managed to kill a trainer at one of the Sea World parks in the States. The park claims it was an accident, oh really? Witnesses say the orca jumped out of the pool, grabbed the trainer around the waist and pulled her back into the pool with him, where she was crushed and partly eaten …http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8535618.stm An accident? Perhaps knowing the same orca had taken part in the killing another trainer before that in 1991. Whatever the truth there, that same orca (filmed for Horizon in the last year or so), http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07891ch  also has a floppy dorsal fin. At least Sea World has seen the light and has now said it will be phasing out the orca shows over time. At least they are no longer making excuses and blaming others for the problems the Park causes.

Other zoos have had problems with their animals too; remember the four-year-old who managed to get into a gorilla exhibit, the gorilla was shot dead. There have been numerous other attacks over the years, but you know what? Most of them were because of stupid actions of the injured people causing them. Like the man who stuck his arm into a tiger cage to get a better photo; or the woman decided it was fun to go for a swim with polar bears, http://www.ranker.com/list/13-of-the-best-idiots-climbing-the-wall-at-the-zoo/danielle-dauenhauer 

But are these attacks justification for closing all zoos? I don’t think so. Certainly those zoos who continue to exhibit animals in plain concrete box-cages should be closed. As long as the animals live in areas large enough for them, what is the problem? No-one can blame an animal for attacking something that enters their home range, there’s enough signs about warning of the dangers so why do they do they act so crazy. Most of us would do the same if someone broke into our home while we were there.

There’s another role that zoos play though, that of conservation in which some animals have been saved from extinction and others haven’t. The Horizon link above gives an example of each. Monkey World in Dorset rescues apes and monkeys from various places and lets some of them breed, depending on species and their risk of becoming extinct, woolly monkeys for example. Locally we have Twycross Zoo just a few miles from here, another primate centre which takes part in various breeding programmes worldwide.

So far you may think I am in favour of keeping most zoos, but that show raised another issue that needs to be taken into account, the culling of zoo animals. It seems that most European zoos do cull animals, simply because they have far too many of them, and these are healthy animals remember. In Denmark one zoo allowed the zoo visitors see the slaughter and butchering of some animals with the meat going to feed the carnivore. As far as I know, I don’t know of any British doing this and keeping quiet about it.

If there are so many animals in a zoo and they can’t be transferred to another zoo, then that points to there being too many animals in our zoos. What is the answer then? Most of these animals will not be suitable for release. Perhaps it’s time to stop the majority of breeding within our zoos. If not, then perhaps there really are too many zoos and some need to close. Here in the midlands for example. Within a 50 miles drive of us here in CV10 we have Dudley, Twycross, Drayton Manor, West Midland Safari Park, + the Birmingham Wildlife Centre and the Sea Life Centre. Only the latter two don’t exhibit as comprehensive range of animals though. I think that’s too many really.

That is going to controversial for a lot of folks, just the idea of closing a zoo is enough to increase pulse rates, add in the local issues and lost jobs and we will have a huge problem. I think it will become a problem soon enough anyway. We will just have to think it through when it does happen, with an open mind that is …

Today’s photo then …

What else, a zoo animal, an elephant.

Today’s funny …

Patient: Doctor, doctor, I've just been bitten by a dog.
Doctor: Name?
Patient: Fido.