Posts Tagged ‘shops at the zoo’

The Extinction of the Wild

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

“I want to share their stories with young people around the world,” writes noted biologist Jane Goodall in her latest book: Hope For Animals and their World. “I want them to know that, even when our mindless activities have almost entirely destroyed some ecosystem or driven a species to the brink of extinction, we must not give up. Thanks to the resilience of nature and the indomitable human spirit, there is still hope.” From a biologist’s standpoint, the most important factor in the preservation of species is protecting these animals’ habitat, whether it has been destroyed by farming, urbanization, predators, poaching or global warming. Today, government action is the top benefactor of endangered species, but the breeding of zoo animals in facilities across America has also saved several key species that were once on the brink of extinction.

The San Diego Zoo has one of the most active species-preservation programs in the nation. Their Center for Conservation and Research raises endangered species, such as California condors, pandas, tigers and African black rhinos. Some of these species are bred in captivity and later released into the wild, while others proliferate in the zoo for their entire adult lives. To help preserve rare animals, the San Diego Wild Animal Park has a cryopreservation facility to freeze sperm and eggs of rare animals. In 2009, the San Diego Zoological Society was proud to announce the birth of a giant panda cub, a western lowland gorilla and two endangered Grand Cayman blue iguanas.

Over the years, the Oregon Zoo has held many fundraisers for endangered animals abroad and has participated in many zoo animals breeding programs. In recent years, they’ve successfully bred western pond turtles, pygmy rabbits, condors and Chinook salmon. The zoo houses a number of endangered or threatened species, including the Rodrigues flying fox, ocelot, Babirusa pig, Malayan sun bear, mandrill, black rhinoceros, Humboldt penguin, African slender-nosed crocodile, barn owl, Edward’s lorikeet, black howler monkey, emerald tree boa and many more.

Animal Rights activists are torn between whether endangered zoo animals should be bred and released into the wild again. Some activists argue that the animal training is by no means sufficient at providing captive-bred animals with the skills they need to survive in the wild. In 1999, a group of released Indian tigers attacked domestic species of cows in the area, but did an inefficient job at killing these animals, causing untold suffering and distress among the local population. In other instances, the animals are released into unsafe environments and were hunted down, killed and exploited by the local people in poverty-stricken regions that once thrived on the illicit trading of animal parts. The controversy will likely continue on until new solutions are proposed and new methods of preserving animals are discovered.

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What is the Best Way to Care for the Wild

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

There is some debate over the best way to save endangered animals. Some say zoo conservation programs and species survival plans are the best way to protect biodiversity and ensure that animals are reproducing and surviving those critical early years, when young offspring are so vulnerable. Others say the “adopt an animal” programs and donating money toward the purchase of nature preserves are best. Some animal rights activists believe in putting pressure on governments to regulate habitat destruction, poaching and human interference as the only way we’re going to see any progress. In the end, the solution may very well consist of a combination of all these ideas, as well as some new innovations.

The Sumatran tiger is one of the world’s most endangered animals, particularly because they are highly coveted in the world of poaching and their habitat is rapidly being destroyed by the logging industry. The island’s nature preserve houses 100 tigers but the poachers have managed to find their way into the park to kill. Three similar breeds of tiger — the Bali, the Java and the Trinil — have already gone extinct. It is believed that there are less than 400 Sumatran tigers in the wild. Similarly, the Siberian tiger has been whittled down to less than 200 existing in the wild. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums has 1,000 tigers in their breeding programs, which has female tigers birthing several cubs each year.

Another one of the most endangered species in the world is the orangutan, which experts warn could be extinct within 10 to 20 years. In 2006, 1,000 apes were killed in raging forest fires that swept Indonesia; not to mention that 80% of their habitat has been destroyed by palm oil/bio-fuel loggers and farmers. Now only small pockets of orangutan exist in Borneo and Sumatra. Their numbers have dwindled from 300,000 to 50,000, with 5,000 of these endangered animals perishing each year. “Orangutans are in catastrophic decline and everything that is being done to protect them is not up to the challenge,” explained Ape Alliance chairman Ian Redmond. “It is all looking pretty bleak.”

According to the annual “Red List,” 16,928 out of 44,838 animal species are threatened with extinction. In fact, half of the world’s 5,487 mammals have declining population, with at least 25% barely clinging to survival. In addition to mammals, 1 in 8 birds, 1 in 3 amphibians and 1 in 2 reptiles are endangered animals. Populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have dropped by a third in just the last 35 years alone, surveyors found. “You’d have to go back to the extinction of the dinosaurs [65 million years ago] to see a decline as rapid as this,” said Jonathan Loh, the Red List report’s editor.

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