Zoom in on zoos

Zoom in on zoos and you end up cage-fighting, such are the divisions between the two factions for and against.

But zoos have come a long way since the Victorian concept of animal museums with the purpose of displaying animals for show. George Mottershead, the legendary founder of Chester Zoo, now one of the top visitor attractions in the UK, put his passion for animal conservation down to a visit to the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens in Manchester as a child. He was horrified to see the conditions in which the animals were kept and vowed to found his own zoo one day where animals would have a freedom to roam – within limits!

His dream did come true when he and his family bought nine acres of land in Upton creating the first enclosures in a stable yard where they kept a polar bear. The plans met with considerable opposition with locals horrified by the prospect of animals rampaging through the Cheshire countryside. The case went to an official enquiry which the family eventually won opening the doors finally in 1931. Chester Zoo, now at the grand old age of 93 years, has gone from strength to strength developing educational and conservational programmes just as its visionary founder intended.

The late 1900’s saw the emergence of a more enlightened society and the concept of a modern zoo where animals were bred and kept to support the conservation of species and public education rather than entertainment.

Three Asiatic lion cubs born this year at London Zoo are an important addition to the international breeding programmes helping save the critically endangered sub species. There are only 600-700 Asiatic lions left in the world, found in just a single area the Gir Forest in Gujurat, India which makes them especially vulnerable to disease or a natural disaster.

School children were asked to come up with names for the three cubs – Syanii, Mali and Shanti – as part of effort to build educational links with schools across the UK and further develop conservation awareness.

Seeing an animal up close and personal may also encourage the public to be more empathetic to a species facing extinction in the wild. The orangutan is a good example with its environment under threat from deforestation as swathes of forest are cleared to plant palms. Fostering empathy may lead some to make a conscious decision not to buy products containing palm oil as a result.

Some zoos also take in exotic pets abandoned because they have grown too big or dangerous. Sadly, a rescue effort was too late for seven giant tortoises who remains were found in a woodland in Devon earlier this year and who appeared from examination to have been malnourished and neglected for several years. Two years ago a giant Aldabra tortoise was rescued from the same area but police and conservationists remain baffled by its discovery.

Those who argue against zoos question what gives human the right to capture, confine or breed other species and that captive breeding programmes may save an endangered species but will not necessarily release them back into the wild. Animals in captivity often suffer from stress and boredom and bonds created between animals are broken when they are sold to other facilities like zoos or safari parks.

Baby animals have the public pulling power but it often leads to zoos having too many animals which, if they cannot be re-homed, have to be killed. In 2014 Copenhagen Zoo shot a young male giraffe, unsuitable for breeding and fed it to the lions – optics not good there! And an experience watching a dolphin somewhere like Sea World will differ hugely from watching that animal in the wild. Zoo visitors can also act irresponsibly leading to stress of animals or in extreme case,s death, as happened tragically in Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 where a toddler fell into the gorilla enclosure resulting in the shooting of one of the troop. Zoo animals can, albeit rarely, escape and are usually killed rather than tranquilised because of the danger to the public.

So the pros and cons rage on but the general consensus is that, love ‘em or hate ‘em, zoos are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable.

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