One of the weirdest pieces of television ever screened in Australia showed a Werribee Zoo rhinoceros which, to put it gently, needed a little human handiwork to get it interested in the local female rhino. You can just imagine the zookeeper describing her day at work. “Oh, you know. Fed the zebras, jerked a rhino off. Just the usual.”
But the point of this story is not to mention a great big wank that screened on the ABC. That would hardly be news. It’s to point out that captive breeding programs are a complicated business. Handled professionally, as they are in Werribee, they can be tremendously effective programs. Handled poorly, they can be nothing short of cruel.
Yesterday’s awful amateur video of German polar bear “Knut” dying in captivity has spawned debate on the worthiness of captive breeding programs, and more generally, the role of zoos. (Click on the link only if you have a strong stomach. It’s a lot more graphic than watching a rhinoceros spank the monkey.)
Do zoos really have a place at all in 2011? And if a species is so critically endangered as to need bolstering by human hand, are we fighting a battle worth fighting by breeding it in captivity? Wiser, surely, to direct efforts towards preserving its natural habitat.
By all accounts, that’s what groups like the World Wildlife Fund do. We contacted their Australian chapter yesterday for a comment on the ethics and effectiveness of captive breeding programs, but their four media reps were apparently all out to lunch eating panda focaccia.
We then rang Sea World on the Gold Coast, which is home to Australia’s only polar bears outside of a Bundaberg Rum label. Sea World has had polar bears since 2000, and currently houses two Canadian orphans, Hudson and Nelson, who arrived in 2004 after a 77 hour journey from Quebec, escorted by Sea World’s Director of Marine Sciences, Trevor Long.
Sea World states on its website that its Polar Bear Shores exhibit is “a unique educational experience that assists, through a wider public awareness, the conservation effort of this perfectly adapted marine mammal.”
That’s quite a big statement. Given that many are claiming the dead German bear was distressed at having so many onlookers, is it really fair to claim that a bunch of kids who’d probably rather be playing Nintendo DS and their sunstruck parents can really help save a species by perving through the glass?
The answer, according to Trevor Long, is a resounding yes.
Long is a great believer in the power of first hand animal encounters to transform kids into the sort of people who will grow up with a genuine interest in wildlife, and in some cases, the desire to devote their lives towards wildlife preservation.
It happened to him when he had a sting ray encounter in a public aquarium as a kid, and he says it’s happening to kids who visit Sea World today. He also makes the very salient point that kids don’t usually watch David Attenborough videos, or others wildlife and nature docos. They’re much more likely to be watching SpongeBob Squarepants.
“You’ll never ever save an animal unless people can see it [first hand] and emphasise with it,” Trevor Long says.
“If we can give people a wonderful positive experience of animals in a beautiful environment that is respectful and dignified, I think it can make them want to have a voice.”
So according to Long, zoos and animal parks can work. And his animal park just happens to be a beauty. Designed by him, Sea World’s Polar Bear Shores has high viewing platforms, because the bears like to see beyond their immediate enclosure, and pools with adjustable water temperature. Even the flow of water in the mock waterfalls is adjustable, to simulate nature’s ebbs and flows.
And get this. Long periodically sets up fans in the enclosure, and puts a whole lot of stinky stuff behind the fans, like seal poo, to simulate the stench of an Arctic breeze. In the zoo game, that’s what’s called an “enriched” environment.
Sadly, many overseas zoos are nowhere near as sophisticated. Long can’t and won’t comment on the conditions in the Berlin Zoo, where Knut died, but he does say many European zoos are proud of their old school enclosures – some of which date back to the 1800s – because of their retro value. From the animal welfare perspective, that’s just sad.
Personally, I still don’t much like the gawking experience of going to a zoo, and neither do my kids, aged four and seven. One very good reason for this is that even highly urbanised Aussie kids like mine are exposed to a much wider variety of creatures than kids in large cities overseas.
Blue tongue lizards in our local park, cockies in our backyard, kangaroos over granny’s back fence in Canberra… why go somewhere to stare at animals through bars when they’re staring at you through the window? And why pay for the privilege?
Also, despite Trevor Long’s infectious enthusiasm and undoubted expertise in creating brilliant captive habitats, you still have to question just how many visiting kids take more than a fleeting interest. For most, an animal in captivity is a soon-forgotten curio.
Clearly there are good zoos and bad zoos, and most Australian zoos are good ones.
But the image of that poor German bear hobbling in agony and confusion before plunging face down in its pool is – to some at least – scarcely more grotesque and plain wrong than two Canadian orphan bears lounging in the luxuriant, 19 degree waters of the Gold Coast.
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