I didn't think you were (it's easier to bring animals to people than people to animals).
But the zoo to game reserve thing is a sliding scale.There are practical issues (the amount of land needed, which is not going to be available near population centres). There are also social issues; because if the only way to see animals is to have a lot of money (even now entrance fees of £15-20 price a lot of people out of the market), and if you don't have public transport, you're in most cases stuffed. Some zoos are accessible by public transport. Many Safari parks (where animals have much larger enclosures and you drive through them) are not. Making animals a little uncomfortable to give all people a chance to see them equally is a trade I'm willing to make.
And then there's the husbandry aspect. If you're ringfencing an existing range, you're starting from a better position than if you try to create a complex ecosystem from scratch. I'm familiar with a lot of the behavioural work done on horses - a species that humans have successfully kept for thousands of years and in millions of locations - and the cutting edge of that brought a number of surprises regarding what was the best and healthiest way of keeping them, and how far you can push the envelope in any direction.
If you want to do the same work for other species, you need to observe them closely, and you need to be able to control their environment to a great degree. And that leaves us back with zoos - you could argue that you need the work done in zoos to enable us to dismantle zoos respectively modify them to be more suitable for the animals they house. (And if that includes not having certain species in zoos, but only keeping them in places that provide a better environment, I'm ok with that. Maybe some species just have too many requirements, or get too easily stressed.
And there's another aspect of all this, and people think differently about it, and I have no idea what the current thinking in the zoo world is, though I guess they're opposed: one way you can ensure that animals are not metaphorically climbing up the walls is to give them something to do. By which I don't just mean exercise - you can't tire a healthy animal that easily - but stuff that makes them think. Quite possibly in conjunction with a human. This works for horses, and it works for highly energetic dogs like Border collies - they're highly destructive and often neurotic whether you keep them in a flat or let them run around a garden, but happy if you work them. But this is encroaching on the 'circus' and having animals perform unnatural things for a human's delight, and often frowned upon...
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Date: 2015-04-21 11:35 am (UTC)But the zoo to game reserve thing is a sliding scale.There are practical issues (the amount of land needed, which is not going to be available near population centres). There are also social issues; because if the only way to see animals is to have a lot of money (even now entrance fees of £15-20 price a lot of people out of the market), and if you don't have public transport, you're in most cases stuffed. Some zoos are accessible by public transport. Many Safari parks (where animals have much larger enclosures and you drive through them) are not. Making animals a little uncomfortable to give all people a chance to see them equally is a trade I'm willing to make.
And then there's the husbandry aspect. If you're ringfencing an existing range, you're starting from a better position than if you try to create a complex ecosystem from scratch. I'm familiar with a lot of the behavioural work done on horses - a species that humans have successfully kept for thousands of years and in millions of locations - and the cutting edge of that brought a number of surprises regarding what was the best and healthiest way of keeping them, and how far you can push the envelope in any direction.
If you want to do the same work for other species, you need to observe them closely, and you need to be able to control their environment to a great degree. And that leaves us back with zoos - you could argue that you need the work done in zoos to enable us to dismantle zoos respectively modify them to be more suitable for the animals they house. (And if that includes not having certain species in zoos, but only keeping them in places that provide a better environment, I'm ok with that. Maybe some species just have too many requirements, or get too easily stressed.
And there's another aspect of all this, and people think differently about it, and I have no idea what the current thinking in the zoo world is, though I guess they're opposed: one way you can ensure that animals are not metaphorically climbing up the walls is to give them something to do. By which I don't just mean exercise - you can't tire a healthy animal that easily - but stuff that makes them think. Quite possibly in conjunction with a human. This works for horses, and it works for highly energetic dogs like Border collies - they're highly destructive and often neurotic whether you keep them in a flat or let them run around a garden, but happy if you work them. But this is encroaching on the 'circus' and having animals perform unnatural things for a human's delight, and often frowned upon...