TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624340.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 124 lines

                                                                                NATURE, Page 60

Just Too Beastly for Words


Zoos are becoming an endangered species, beset by financial crises
and targeted by animal-rights activists

By JESSE BIRNBAUM -- Reported by Helen Gibson/London and Anne
Hopkins/New York


    History's first zoo keeper must have been one very busy
conservationist, but at least he was spared the burdensome barbs
of animal-rights activists, possibly because they were engaged
in self-preservation. All Noah had to do was tend his passengers
for 40 days and then turn them loose.

    Today Noah would be plowing heavier seas. Not only are zoo
managers concerned with the care of their charges, they are also
concerned that the zoo, as an institution for research,
education and preservation, is becoming as endangered as some
of the animals it houses. Financial support has dropped, and
costs keep climbing. Rising too is a clamor from critics who
claim that zoos are no better than prisons, designed for the
amusement of mindless gawkers. The more militant activists want
to shut zoos down altogether.

    Such is their zeal that a delegation from People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) trooped into Washington's
National Zoo last Christmas bearing gifts of exotic fruits to
remind the beasts of the good old days back home. They serenaded
the inmates with heartfelt renditions of God Rest Ye All the
Animals and Let 'em Go (to the tune of Let It Snow).

    Warthogwash! Michael Hutchins, director of conservation
and science for the American Association of Zoological Parks
and Aquariums, says the activists are "unrealistic and
biologically naive; they are taking human moral precepts and
trying to apply them to animals." That view, he adds, may have
some merit when it is focused on domestic and farm creatures and
even on the plight of laboratory animals, but it has no place
in wildlife conservation. "We're trying to save animals from
extinction," he says of the AAZPA, which includes 158 of the
nation's best-known, most prestigious and carefully regulated
zoos and aquariums. "If we were to follow the animal-rights
ethic to the letter, it would be a disaster. It would lead to
species extinction." Where the activists may have a point, he
says, concerns conditions at 1,400 roadside menageries,
traveling shows and petting zoos around the country, many of
which are substandard and, rightly, ought to be shuttered.

    But no such distinctions exist for many activists, who
believe zoo keepers are guilty of "speciesism," the movement's
politically correct counterpart to racism. Animals, PETA
insists, are no different from people and should be treated
accordingly. "There really is no rational reason for saying a
human being has special rights,'' says PETA co-founder Ingrid
Newkirk, whose credo is "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy."

    This means, among other things, that incarceration in a
penned environment -- or even an unpenned one, in the most
modern and progressive of zoos -- inflicts unacceptable
psychological and even physical harm on animals, all to provide
diversion for Homo sapiens. Such treatment, say activists,
cannot be justified by any beneficial services that zoos
perform.

    At the extreme, some zoophobes suggest that the extinction
of endangered species is preferable to confinement. In the
essay "Against Zoos," University of Colorado philosopher Dale
Jamieson asks, "Is it really better to confine a few hapless
Mountain Gorillas in a zoo than to permit the species to become
extinct? . . . If it is true that we are inevitably moving
toward a world in which Mountain Gorillas can survive only in
zoos, then we must ask whether it is really better for them to
live in artificial environments of our design than not to be
born at all."

    The answer is yes, it is better. The globe is losing
valuable species day by day; 20% to 50% of the world's
biological diversity may be gone before the end of the next
century, and the irony is that human beings will have
contributed overwhelmingly to that loss. The human population
is expected to nearly double within the next few decades. For
Third World agrarian economies especially, the competition for
space and resources will grow during this "demographic winter,"
and the losers will be wild animals.

    In fact, what was once called the wild hardly exists
anymore. Even some of the great African game preserves are
little more than fenced megazoos. The vast spaces required by
such predatory species as leopards, for example, have been
reduced to fragments occupied by ever smaller animal
populations. This often leads to a loss of genetic diversity of
species and an increase in infant mortality.

    The response to this depletion, argue the zoo managers, is
controlled breeding in captivity, which has already wrought
remarkable success. The London Zoo has bred the rare Pere
David's deer of China and the Arabian Oryx and reintroduced them
to their native habitats. The San Diego Zoo, which houses more
than 150 species on the endangered list and has returned a dozen
of them to the wild, recently produced triplet Sumatran tigers.
Working with the Los Angeles Zoo, San Diego has also had
spectacular results with the rare California condor. A sparse
flock of 16 has grown to 50, and some may be returned this fall
to the mountains near Ventura.

    That's not good enough for the activists. They suggest
that folks who want to see animals should instead visit the
wild places. San Diego Zoo spokesman Jeff Jouatt did that very
thing earlier this year. In Kenya he saw five rhinoceroses
snuffling about in a game park. They were surrounded by 10 vans
filled with tourists. That wasn't so bad, he was told. Usually
the rhinos perform for 50 vans. God rest ye merry, rhinos.