I was just curious to what is your stand point on zoos? Feel free to not answer this if you think it will just stir the pot!

jules-slayer-of-the-vampyres:

vampireapologist:

I’m 100% pro-zoo in theory and do have some favorite zoos, but I am very critical about zoos in practice, specifically about the way great apes and marine mammals are kept.

That said, it’s just not even a point of debate that as far as conservation goes, zoos get results. If nobody cares about a species, hell, if no one even knows about a species, the likelihood of anyone getting the funding to protect or revive it is slim to none.

In wildlife we have different labels for different species, one of those labels being a “flagship species,” which are species that are easy to popularize. Think of pandas (most famously), dolphins, and elephants.

There’s a lot of debate about whether pandas are a hopeless cause and that money should be going somewhere more productive, but the argument can be made that as a Flagship species, Pandas can also act as an “Umbrella species,” because they have the potential to bring in funding to protect their habitats which are shared by less “charismatic” species that otherwise stood no chance. Which is why I still stand by “save the pandas,” regardless of my opinion on the future of pandas themselves.

Anyway, back to the main point:

People have a hard time caring about something in theory. It’s a flaw of compassion that I don’t know we’ll ever fully overcome. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a big world, with a lot of big problems, and it’s damaging for us to know about and obsess over all of them at the same time. So maybe it’s our brains’ way of self-defending? Who knows.

But I do know that I cannot reasonably expect the everyday person to take up arms over a type of freshwater mussel that’s endangered in a specific creek halfway across the world.

But (this is a total hypothetical) if a species of adorable otters happen to NEED those mussels to survive, and I can put some of those otters in a zoo for tens of thousands of people to see and love and connect with, and then I can say “hey…..we need funding to save the otters’ food supply,” and visitors become donors and activists, and then I get to protect my mussels, the otters, AND quite likely a water supply for humans??

I’ll take it.

Of course, zoos can be bad places, and have been historically until recently. But they’re basically one of the only ways to get the public Truly interested in conservation, and thus I see them as an absolute necessity, and I’ll keep supporting their improvement and efforts.

My best friend works in a zoo and they do so much for conservation of animals and for saving water and limiting single use products. The local zoo got rid of some animals bc they realized they couldn’t keep them and sent them to a place they can live healthily. Zoos are great done right.