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The Rise of Pinjrapoles and the Fall.... : 51
tamarin to this list. 37 With current extinction rates estimated to be between 100 and 1,000 times greater than natural background extinction rates, it seems that breeding efforts may have the potential to be a good justification for keeping some animals in zoos. After all, this justification at least seems to be for the concern of the vital interests of animals other than us. Does this justification hold up to scrutiny however?
Unfortunately, when it comes to most zoos, talk of breeding for conservation has been talk rather than walk, with most zoos doing very little breeding and even fewer breeding animals who are members of an endangered species. Mostly, the breeding of nonhumans in zoos are for the sake of zoos, enabling them to keep up their collections” and trade them for other animals from other zoos. Far from being a claim made by only radicals, this was even stated by Director Keith Winsten at Canisius College's Future of Zoos Symposium (FOZS) in his statement that Species Survival Plans (SSPs) designed by AZA-accredited zoos are “not designed to maintain wild populations, but to maintain captive ones.” Assistant curator of the Maryland zoo, Kevin Murphy, also stated' "we can't say anymore that we'll put them back in the wild” and a zoo "can never be an ark in reality.” In his speech on "The Diminished State of Wildlife" at the FOZS, even William Conway displayed much doubt in the viability of zoo-based SSPs for larger species, saying that their network is just too small for them to be successful. When asked by zoo and "unzoo" architect Jon Coe about how SSPs would be able to help animals in an emergency situation, William Conway simply said, “We can't save them.” Further supporting the fact that breeding is mostly for the good of zoo business, not conservation, most species represented in zoos are not even those threatened with extinction, but rather "charismatic megafauna” who are the best for getting people to attend zoos.* Additionally, upon a massive review of captive-breeding programs, 39 found that only 13% of the few captive-born populations even slated for reintroduction were viable. This echoed the earlier results of 40 which found only 11% to marginally succeed. As said earlier, claims of species conservation in zoos are fig leaves used to justify their proliferation rather than actual justifications or even realities of breeding viability. The leaders of the zoological industry admit the fallacious nature of these claims, but still allow false messages of conservation to permeate throughout their establishments. This must stop as dishonest claims of conservation only serve to further the more sinister “meta-messages” of domination written about by Waldau.
Mark Rowlands has also pointed out that most zoos that do have breeding programs have their major breeding programs located in "facilities specifically created for this purpose and far from the attention of zoo-goers," such as the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society's Wildlife Conservation Center on St. Catherine's Island in Georgia.“! Much like I mentioned earlier that conducting field research is not dependent upon keeping animals in captivity, conducting breeding operations elsewhere is not dependent upon keeping animals in zoos so this cannot be a valid justification for doing so. As long as morally permissible zoos can be established however, I will applaud zoos that donate money to both permissible field research and permissible breeding facilities but can such programs even be established according to Jain ethics?
