Can zoos offer more than entertainment?

Abstract

Zoos and aquariums are facing criticism due to a heightened awareness of animal welfare issues, but also see their importance for conservation work expanding. Can they adapt to a new role focused on conservation and education rather than just entertainment? Michael Gross reports. Zoos and aquariums are facing criticism due to a heightened awareness of animal welfare issues, but also see their importance for conservation work expanding. Can they adapt to a new role focused on conservation and education rather than just entertainment? Michael Gross reports. There’s always something exciting happening at the zoo — some cute little cub being born or making its first steps, or a gorilla taking selfies. The media love the visitor attractions as much as the schoolchildren who are the core audience — as pictures and video footage of attractive-looking animals are so much easier to obtain when said animals are fenced in. On the other hand, there is an equal amount of negative headlines. These arise for instance, when spare animals, such as last year’s cause célèbre, the young giraffe Marius from Copenhagen Zoo, are euthanized just to fit human requirements, or when the entertainment activity at London Zoo extends into the night hours and keeps animals awake and irritated. Criticism of such perceived abuse of the power that humans hold over their animal ‘prisoners’ adds weight to the more fundamental arguments of animal rights campaigners who call for these attractions to be banned on the philosophical principle that sentient beings shouldn’t be held in captivity for the amusement of others. These arguments are particularly resonant for our closest relatives, the great apes, and for cetaceans that are trained to perform. This is a debate that circuses have already lost in many places, and zoos and aquariums could follow in their tracks. Unlike circuses, however, zoos and aquariums claim to make a positive contribution both to biodiversity awareness and to species conservation. As the ongoing man-made extinction will only get worse, this role is bound to get more important and all wildlife attractions may have to adapt to it to demonstrate their ethical credibility. Facing mounting criticism from the animal rights camp, wildlife attractions often justify their existence with a mission to educate children and adults about important issues, like biodiversity and conservation challenges. But can they prove that a visit to the zoo adds to the understanding of these issues? Until recently, there was virtually no hard evidence to back up these claims. Eric Jensen from the University of Warwick, UK, recently published the first large-scale impact study evaluating children’s knowledge of biodiversity and conservation issues both before and after a visit to London Zoo (Conservation Biology (2014) 28, 1004–1011). Jensen analysed data from 2,839 schoolchildren, some of whom had attended a presentation from the zoo’s education officers during their zoo visit, while others relied only on teachers for guidance during their visit. “The main task used to evaluate learning asked the children to draw their favourite wildlife habitat with all the plants and animals that live there,” Jensen explains. “These drawings and children’s self-description of the drawings were then analysed for accuracy in terms of the animals’ physiology, inclusion of ecologically relevant detail successfully placing animals in the right type of habitat and conceptual sophistication in understanding of the animals’ physiology and habitats.” Jensen observed significant positive change in 41% of the visits supported by the zoo’s education officers and 34% of the visits only guided by teachers. Given that there are over 700 million visits to accredited wildlife attractions every year, even if only one third of these result an improved understanding of biodiversity and conservation, that is still a significant contribution. Considering the more modest success rate of the teacher-guided visits, Jensen notes that perhaps the information provided on signs, screens etc. could benefit from improvements to make all visits more beneficial. To quantify the claim of educational relevance of zoos more precisely, experimental scientists would perhaps also like to see a control group who get the presentation from the zoo’s education officer without the live animals, perhaps backed up with a video instead. So far, zoos have used visitors’ surveys mainly to investigate issues of customer satisfaction, access issues, and management. But given the ethical dilemmas surrounding their business, they should really have an interest in providing solid evidence to show they can offer added educational value above and beyond what biology teachers can do with modern media at school. Similar considerations hold for biodiversity awareness in adults. In a separate study conducted together with Andrew Moss from Chester Zoo, UK, and Markus Gusset from the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), Jensen investigated to what extent wildlife attractions can help to meet the target 1 agreed in the Aichi Biodiversity Convention, which reads: “By 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably.” WAZA has officially made a commitment to work towards this target. As in the pupils study, researchers compared surveys obtained before and after visits to assess how a visit to a wildlife attraction has changed the biodiversity literacy and the knowledge of actions they can take to protect biodiversity for 5,661 visitors to 26 institutions (Conservation Biology (2015) 29, 537–544). The researchers concluded from their findings that “zoos and aquariums can make a positive contribution to Aichi Biodiversity Target 1 because zoos and aquariums are increasing the number of people who understand biodiversity. They are also bolstering the ranks of those who are aware of the steps they can take to conserve and use biodiversity sustainably by improving knowledge of actions to help protect biodiversity.” Detailed analysis showed that the results improved when visitors were shown a film during their visit, which again begs the question for a control experiment using only the film in the absence of the wildlife. Moreover, the learning effect was much less in evidence for visitors who identified as members of conservation or environmental groups, presumably because they already started from a higher level of awareness and better baseline knowledge. This seems to suggest that attractions should consider tiered materials to offer extra learning opportunities for visitors who arrive with previous knowledge. Wildlife attractions can also play a crucial role in educating the wider public about global issues, such as climate change. The French national aquarium Nausicaa at Boulogne, for instance, has recently launched a well-publicised exhibition on the impact of climate change on the oceans, to lead up to the forthcoming climate summit COP21 at Paris (http://www.nausicaa.fr/). Not all institutions take that opportunity, however. As the New York Times noted in 2012, Georgia Aquarium has assured visitors that they will not be subjected to material about global warming (http://nyti.ms/1DMoHkT). The second, separate claim to moral justification for zoos and aquariums rests on the welfare of the animal species concerned (as opposed to the individuals that animal rights are more concerned about). As Ben Minteer and James Collins from Arizona State University at Tempe, USA, have explained in a recent review article, ethical considerations at the species level can conflict with those at the individual level in complex ways and the scientists involved have to find a responsible balance (ILAR J. (2013) 54, 41–51). Traditionally, research conducted at wildlife attractions was mostly about animal husbandry. Faced with the threats of biodiversity loss and climate change, however, these facilities could play a much bigger role in studying and predicting the effects of global change on animals. For instance, large aquariums could gently wind the clock forwards and simulate the changes in ocean temperature and acidity that are inevitably going to happen in the coming years, and study their effects on parameters such as fertility and behaviour of marine species. Such research, aiming to find ways of mitigating the effects of climate change on wildlife in its native habitat by studying small numbers of individuals in captivity, in a model habitat, could reduce animal suffering overall and thus offset the ethical qualms about keeping some of them in captivity. When the worst case happens and a species is heading for extinction in the wild, zoos and aquariums may serve as an ark to ensure their survival. Tigers, for example, are severely threatened in their native habitat, but due to their popularity in zoos and their unproblematic reproduction in captivity, their survival as a species is secured (Curr. Biol. (2012) 22, R893–R895). However, it appears unlikely that they could then be reintroduced into the wild. Animal rights campaigners object to this claim, highlighting the undue emphasis on charismatic species that are popular with visitors. However, an alternative approach to sheltering threatened species is also emerging. Thus, the Amphibian Ark (AArk; www.amphibianark.org) helps to coordinate captive rescue of and research with species that are under threat of extinction, including frog species endangered by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has been spread via a range of different human activities and is now threatening species around the globe. The AArk’s Conservation Needs Assessment process objectively assesses species for conservation actions both in captivity and in the wild, in order to decide which species should have captive programs established ahead of others, within the possibilities defined by limited resources. Conservation practitioners are then able to focus their efforts and resources on the species and environments that are most in need of help, and are likely to benefit the most from those efforts. Apart from offering protection while attempts are made to mitigate threats in the wild, Amphibian Ark partners are also attempting to breed animals with resistance traits and consider releasing them to habitats with better survival chances. The ultimate goal of their work is always to return captive-bred animals from these ‘assurance’ colonies back to the wild and ensure their survival there. “Zoos, aquariums and other captive breeding centres are playing a vital role in helping to protect some of the world’s most threatened amphibian species,” says AArk’s Kevin Johnson. “A number of species, including the tiny Kihansi spray toad from Tanzania, Australia’s charismatic corroboree frog, and one of the world’s largest frogs, the mountain chicken from Montserrat and Dominica, are being bred in captivity by zoos and universities, with the offspring subsequently released back into the wild. These species face almost certain extinction without these captive programs.” Minteer and Collins note that, as zoos and aquariums are increasingly challenged to take up research to benefit animal survival in the wild, and as the remaining habitats continue to decrease in size and suffer more human impact thus becoming more zoo-like, the differences between the situation of animals in natural and in artificial habitats (in situ and ex situ, respectively) are beginning to diminish. The authors conclude that “these changes will continue to blur the boundaries of in situ and ex situ conservation programs as a range of management activities are adopted across more or less managed ecological systems increasingly influenced by human activities.” With their experience in accommodating the needs of animals and people, experts from wildlife attractions can also reach out and support conservation projects in situ. For instance, Lauren Humphrey from the National Marine Aquarium at Plymouth, UK, has coordinated a collaborative conservation project at the Blue Bay Marine Park in Mauritius, together with a local hotel. Much like a zoo, the hotel depends on the wildlife to attract visitors, who in turn should be guided not to disrupt the habitat needs of the animals. Specifically, Humphrey set up a programme to educate and incentivise members of the hotel staff to look after the conservation needs in the surroundings of the hotel, and to make the business more sustainable and reduce its environmental impact. A ‘Conservation through Tourism Award’ was set up that rewards local hotels and their staff for their engagement with conservation tasks. There are bronze and silver awards for hotels raising conservation and sustainability awareness, as well as gold awards that involve interactions with organisations such as environmental NGOs. Eric Jensen has evaluated the impact of this programme, which is described in detail in a chapter of his forthcoming book From Conservation Education to Public Engagement: Research, Principles and Practice (Cambridge University Press). Similar collaborations and conservation outreach programmes are in place elsewhere. The Phoenix Zoo in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, for instance, supports conservation projects in situ with its annual grants launched in 2009 (http://phoenixzoo.org/conservation/global-conservation/). In total, the more than 200 accredited members of the (US) Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) spend over $160 million each year on in situ conservation initiatives based in countries around the world (https://www.aza.org/conservation-funding/). Bristol Zoo (UK) has recently completed a fundraising appeal to save 750 abandoned African penguin chicks, which were then successfully reintroduced into the wild. This species is endangered to the point that saving individual chicks is of crucial importance for its survival. In a press statement, Christoph Schwitzer, Director of Conservation at Bristol Zoological Society, said: “Unless conservation charities such as us intervene, these chicks would starve to death. We wanted to help so we launched an urgent appeal. Recent research shows that penguin chicks hand-reared at the rescue centre in South Africa survive and reproduce just as well as those naturally reared, when reintroduced back into the wild. We would like to say a massive thankyou to all those who supported the appeal — the money raised will literally help to save a species.” In situations like these, captive animals can serve as ambassadors to motivate people to help saving their conspecifics in the wild. Given that wildlife attractions tend to attract not only millions of visitors but also a lot of media attention as well as the critical gaze of just about anybody who worries about the relations between humans and animals, they too may have to adapt to the times of climate change and biodiversity loss. In the future, taxpayers and visitors may demand that the zoos and aquariums prove their claims that they are doing good deeds for humans and animals alike, beyond the traditional mission of just offering access to wildlife for entertainment. Nobody would want the zoos and aquariums to become repositories of numerous species labelled ‘extinct in the wild’. So the challenge for all these institutions is to find their role in helping the animals that are still wild and free.