Monkeys for sale, no questions asked

First take on the IKEA monkey trial

I am guessing that Yasmin Nakhuda has never heard of "acquisitive mimetic desire", even though she displayed it to an absurd degree, thus contributing to an odious form of animal abuse: the exotic pet trade. It's the desire to have something because someone else has it, and is often used by advertising agencies and marketers to push products that people don't really need.

I sat just behind Nakhuda last week, as she sobbed nearing the end of a trial she had instigated. She had gone to court seeking to reacquire "Darwin", the baby Japanese macaque whose image was flashed on You Tube and on TV screens and newspapers internationally when he appeared in a faux-shearling coat in an Ikea parking lot in Toronto, last winter. He was dubbed "the Ikea Monkey". Nakhuda was crying because lawyer Kevin Toyne, defending the Story Book Farm primate sanctuary, suggested she had known what she was doing in signing Darwin over. The primate sanctuary was where Darwin was taken after being rescued by Toronto Animal Services (TAS). TAS is designed to deal with dogs and cats, not monkeys. Once ownership had been transferred it cleared the way to place Darwin in the sanctuary.

I've not been to Story Book, but I know that it is in its early stages of development, heading toward the high standards we have set with our own primate sanctuary, in Texas. Story Book, now housing 25 primates, needs support, but instead all Nakhuda's followers have done, is criticize it, without actually seeing it for themselves. Sadly, the law prohibits sending these rescued primates into the U.S., but that does not prevent real humanitarians, like the good folks at Story Book, from doing their best. As is true with our, much larger, sanctuary, many of their animals are former exotic pets who became too much for their owners to handle.

Even though she is a lawyer specializing in real estate, thus property rights, Nakhuda claimed she was tricked or coerced into signing the animal over. David Behan, the gently-spoken TAS officer in charge on the Sunday that Darwin escaped from where he had been locked in a dog kennel, in Nakhuda's car in the Ikea parking lot, denied it. Given how often Nakhuda changed her story I would be inclined to believe Behan, a decent chap just trying to do his job. An unhealthy man nearing retirement, he didn't look to me like he could intimidate a chipmunk. Behan's supervisor, phoned at home, told the officer to try to get Nakhuda to sign Darwin over. He did, but no evidence was presented to show he forced her to do so.

There is a real question about the form itself, which is badly written. It, and the bylaw in question, are to be updated to prevent any such confusion in the future. But none of that prevented Nakhuda from just saying "no", although she still could not have legally kept Darwin in Toronto. She claims she now has an offer on a house in one community that allows keeping of non-human primates, conditional on her winning the case. That community, Kawartha Lakes, plans to pass its own legislation to prevent the keeping of primates.

Throughout this mess Nakhuda constantly has referred to Darwin as her son, her baby. But he had a real mother who has been forgotten in all this. There are two ways that baby primates enter the exotic pet trade: in the wild it is normally the result of the mother being killed and the baby stolen. Otherwise she fiercely holds on to her baby. In captivity the baby is simply forced from the mother, against her will. But her emotional trauma didn't seem to touch Nakhuda or her small but loyal band of supporters.

We know nothing of Darwin's origins before he showed up in a filthy diaper, harness and doll-sized coat at the Ikea parking lot. At first Nakhuda said she had been given Darwin on the street in Montreal. That was later changed to a dealer in Toronto she met while looking to buy a hyacinth macaw. After swearing an affidavit that Darwin was a "gift" she admitted that, well, no, the dealer wanted ten thousand dollars, in cash, but settled for five up front. Oh, but he said he'd give it back, making Darwin a "gift" to Nakhuda's weird way of thinking. He actually never has returned the money. Some gift.

And why, while looking for an endangered parrot to buy, did Nakhuda purchase a baby macaque? The dealer didn't have a hyacinth macaw handy, but he had a couple of monkey species, one a capuchin. They're cute. Ah, but no; Yasmin had seen a You-Tube video from showing a Japanese macaque in Japan, the only country where they naturally occur, taught to do simple waiting chores in a restaurant. Wow, a monkey acting like a waiter.that was all the reason she needed! Talk about an acquisitive mimetic desire and I thought guys who thought they could pick up sexy dates if they drank the right brand of beer were pushovers!

Within a couple of days, voila, from Vancouver or Montreal or who knows where, suddenly there is a baby Japanese macaque, no questions asked. No documentation, either. No health certificate. No receipt. No concerns. Any problems about Darwin being a species it is illegal to keep in Toronto and the dealer would wave his magic permit. But when the excrement hit the rotating blades he didn't, telling Yasmin to "walk away", according to her testimony, and he'd return the cash. Yeah, sure.

As I write, the judge is determining whether Darwin can stay at the sanctuary, or must be returned to Yasmin, no doubt to be dressed in silly clothes and, who knows...maybe wait on her table in her new home in Kawartha Lakes? The judge is constrained by the law. Because of the bizarre nature of the case, and its look into the sordid world of the exotic pet industry, I'll return to this issue in future blogs.

Barry Kent MacKay
Born Free USA
Zoocheck Inc.

My Last Middle Island Blog, Yes, But Just For Now A Tale of Just Two Innocent Creatures

Published 06/06/13 Born Free USA

My last two blogs dealt with the days spent in a boat anchored just offshore of Middle Island, in the southern end of Lake Erie, the very southernmost land still in Canada, mere yards from where the country ends and the United States begins. I was there with my colleague, Liz White, to monitor and record Parks Canada's deadly assault on nesting double-crested cormorants. Staff armed with small calibre rifles and accompanied by spotters would walk up and down the island's length, usually hidden from our view by thick vegetation, shooting the nesting cormorants, and in the process causing havoc among the great blue herons, black-crowned night-herons, Canada geese and herring and ring-billed gulls also trying to make nests, lay eggs and raise babies on the otherwise uninhabited island. Great egrets were there, too, but the shooting has driven them completely away, even though they are noted for "nest site tenacity", the quality of staying with their nest even under duress.

One Parks Canada staffer would stay aboard the boat that brought the crew over from the mainland, an hour and a half trip. The shooters were trying to kill the cormorants with head shots, aiming carefully at a small, moving target. Birds who had their beaks clipped by bullets or were otherwise wounded by in ways that allowed them to fly, would flee to die or recover as best they could. But if the bullet brought them down to the ground they would tend to make their way to shore, and often into the water. There they would be pursued by the powered boat, diving to get away until, too tired and waterlogged to again dive, they awaited the blast of a 12 gauge shotgun; "euthanasia". Even then some found the energy to dive at the gun's flash, and sometimes it took two or three shots to render the birds dead.

These are nesting birds, bound by an instinctive imperative to maintain a presence at the nest. Except under intense duress one or both parents are always at the nest while there are eggs or young chicks. Cormorants swim and eat fish, but their plumage is not like that of loons, grebes or ducks; it is not entirely waterproof. Therefore they are limited in how long they could stay in the water.

And that was the plight of the two birds we saw on shore that the shooters and spotters had somehow missed reporting. What to do? We had neither the practical means nor the legal right to rescue them. To leave them meant that they would die slowly. Cormorants need to be able to fly to survive and these birds clearly would never fly again. The first was sluggish, perhaps bleeding internally, the second was more alert, but with an obviously shattered wing.

And so we called them in, on the boat's radio. On each occasion the power boat came as close to shore as was safe. With the gunmen on the island, and the boat looming nearer, the birds did what instinct directed, and took to the water. There, in spite of their respective wounds, each was able to swim hundreds of yards, gently chased by the Park's Canada boat, the intent presumably being to tire them. Cormorants can, when shot at with a shotgun, dive at the sight of the flash and be mostly or totally under the water by the time the shotgun pellets arrive. But I suspect, as well, the Parks Canada staff wanted to get the bird away from us and our cameras. Before the booming shots were fired the boat would position itself between us and the wounded bird, and I can't help but think this was intentional.

The wounded birds never had a chance. Their reward for not hurting any of our kind while simply fulfilling natural functions that have evolved through three billion years of life on earth, was to be first wounded, and then relentlessly, inescapably hunted down by the vast power we humans command with our internal combustion engines and high-powered firearms, and killed.

My emotions were mixed. I didn't want to aid the culling or see these birds killed, but on the other hand it would be cruel to let them suffer; we had to report them. But perhaps the most profound emotion of all was a sense of deep shame for my kind, mixed with admiration for the cormorants and anger at Parks Canada. The cormorants do nothing but ask their small share of a world we continually crowd out, and we deny them even that.

Barry Kent MacKay
Born Free USA
Zoocheck Inc.

Middle Island Mismanagement, Parks Canada Shows How Not to Conserve the Natural Environment

Published 05/23/13 Born Free USA

This is not the place to go into details, but in April and May I found myself on four occasions living in the 21st century, benefitting from GPS navigation, cellphones and my new digital camera, while viewing the bloody results of early 19th century thinking.

Before Charles Darwin, before the basic tenets of evolution and ecology came together, human policy tended to treat the natural world as an entity to be controlled, exploited and defeated by us. We were godly beings apart from nature, hubristic in our right to do as we pleased. Forests felled, species wiped out, native peoples shoved aside and profits made from “resources” evaluated by the amount of money we could earn by their exploitation, destroying what annoyed us.

Our ancestors tended to classify animal species as “good” or “bad” based on their immediate economic value or esthetic interest. “Game” species were good, thus species who ate game species were “bad.” Species who ate species who hurt our economic value could be good; their predators therefore were bad.

We had yet to understand the dynamic interactions between predators and prey. Hawks, owls and fish-eating species were, like wolves and foxes and snakes, bad, unless some economic value could be squeezed from them. Foxes were good, for example, if their skins could be sold, bad if they ate a grouse or raided the hen house. Rabbits were good if properly cooked, bad if munching in the vegetable garden.

Slowly things changed as scientists and naturalists came to realize that predators, all species, played roles in the ecological whole, and that “good” and “bad” were highly subjective designations based on simplistic and short-sighted value systems and quite lacking in scientific objectivity. To at least some degree public policy began shifting in reflection of growing understanding about naturally evolved predator-prey relationships.

Too often wildlife management agencies remain mired in early 19th century thinking. To a major degree this reflects political responses to concerns of a public where ignorance of nature is rampant. We also have immense capacity to resent other beings, and while political correctness is slowly curbing overt bias against humans who are different, animals are seen as ours to hate and abuse on whatever pretext. And few North American species seem to trigger more irrational prejudice than the double-crested cormorant.

In the United States, wildlife management agencies still kill large numbers of these native birds out of concern that cormorants eat too many fish. Study after study essentially indicates otherwise, and here in Ontario, at least, we’ve managed to get that particular argument off the table, simply because it is incorrect.

Indeed, as our boat left the mainland on southern Lake Erie’s northern shore for the hour and a quarter trip to Middle Island, I noted how one saw cormorants here or there, sometimes in flocks, but until we reached their island nursery, most water was empty of them. But we passed mile after mile of buoys and markers indicating a vast network of fishing nets whose consumption of fish dwarfs what the cormorants consume.

But cormorant excrement is high in nutriments that, in concentration, kill vegetation. While none of the trees on Middle Island is anything but common, several species are at the northern end of their range, thus rare in Ontario, where the mainland has been largely denuded of native forests. The great egret, the world’s commonest heron, is also fairly near the limit of its range and so one of the rationales for killing cormorants is to protect the trees for the egrets to nest in.

But Parks Canada managed to chase off the egrets. Nesting birds are vulnerable and even egrets, known for their nest tenacity, couldn’t take the pressure. We saw one on the first day of culling and a pair on the last day, but all were driven away as the gunmen made their way up the length of the island, shooting cormorants off their nests.

In a review of the first five years of culling, Parks Canada claimed that great blue herons were not especially bothered by the fusillades, not leaving their nests for more than 12 minutes. We knew that was utter nonsense, but to prove it when not allowed on the island is difficult. The island is off-limits to all but Parks Canada and their gunners, and after much negotiation involving Parks Canada and the Ontario Provincial Police, we were only allowed to anchor in one location with a limited view of the island.

But our position did provide a good view of one specific great blue heron nest whose owners tried to incubate, but wound up standing beside, or leaving, the nest for literally hours on end. Other great blue herons had to stand on the sand spit that extends off one end of Middle Island, a waste of their time/energy budget that could not help but compromise egg and brood survivability.

Given all the real conservation problems and challenges the world increasingly faces, it seems such a shame to see so much money go into such a cruel and needless exercise as shooting thousands of cormorants off their nests. The cormorants are native; if they kill off some or all of the trees it in no way results in anything other than an offense to the esthetics of some people who want to preserve the trees because they don’t realize or care that the cormorants belong. They say they want to preserve the “Carolinian” species, but there is nothing non-Carolinian about a cormorant colony in the middle of Lake Erie!

After the last shot was fired the birds could settle down and try, as they have done for so many millions of years before we came along, to raise their families. They are not good birds, not bad birds, just birds who belong in nesting colonies on islands in Lake Erie.

Barry Kent MacKay
Born Free USA
Zoocheck Inc.

The Species I Fear the Most, Or How I Spent the Past Few Days

Published 05/10/13 Born Free USA

OK. I’ll fill in the details in a later blog, but I here I want to talk about just getting back from Middle Island, a tiny 46-acre island in Lake Erie. I was anchored offshore, meters from the U.S. border, the most southern place one could be and still be in Canada. I was there with colleague Liz White to monitor gunmen as they shot hundreds of double-crested cormorants off their nests.

This was the sixth year the gunmen had done this, disrupting a large, mixed colony of nesting waterbirds: cormorants, night-herons, great blue herons, herring and ring-billed gulls and Canada geese. We had done this the previous Monday, as well; we’ll do it once or twice more this season. There had been egrets nesting there, too, but while we saw one the previous Monday, they seem to have been chased off by the gunfire. This is a national park. Protecting the egrets was part of the goal. I’ll explain all, in a later blog, meanwhile see this. If it sounds brutally insane, yep, I’d say so!

As we drove back we added to the list of road-kills we could identify along the highway: one wild turkey, one American kestrel, several red-winged blackbirds, a couple of opossums, numerous raccoons, a few cottontails and skunks and many undetermined. And then the trucks. One of the problems with being in this business is that you see so much more than others see. What to others is just an anonymous tractor-trailer we know carries 10,000 pheasants jammed close together in tiny crates, no food or water, no protection from the noise and confusion of the highway, or the cold slipstream.

Pheasants? Yes. Chickens are a species of pheasant, but of course we degrade the term “chicken” to mean something not worth worrying about.

We passed trucks in which you could glimpse pigs, so many in miserable discomfort en route to slaughter. At lunchtime we stopped at one of the highway’s pull-offs, called “En Route,” where restaurants sold cooked body parts of similar animals, now at least beyond suffering. Pulled pork? Wings? No thanks.

At home my mailbox contained the long-awaited copy of “Handbook of Mammals of the World, Volume III,” which describes all non-human primate species in the world, with up-to-date data on their population status. My e-mail contained concerns about one primate species, the long-tailed macaque of Southeast Asia and various islands and archipelagos of that region. Some 240,000 live macaques had been exported for “medical, scientific, commercial and breeding purposes from 2004 until July 2010,” according to the book, and according to my e-mail updates, some 100,000 more had been shot as part of a cull.

They, fellow primates, are denied life because they are a nuisance. The ones removed appear to be from the core population; no one knows how many there are, but they have, according to the book, been officially recognized as the first “widespread and rapidly declining” primate species. I can do no better than the quote in my e-mail from an anonymous writer:

“Where to begin? ... Not only do I weep for the inhumane experience the long-tailed macaques experienced before their souls left our planet, I disparage for the plight of our humanity. ... Violence and killing seem to be a strong strain within our collective DNA. ... We do far more damage around this spinning orb that is our home than all the other living species (combined), than proportionally to what these tinier primate cousins of ours are doing to inconvenience the humans in Malaysia. ...

“Every human who knows about this story should feel shame for the fellow humans who perpetrate these heinous encroachments upon others’ habitats and then rationalized their murdering of those effected by the encroachment. ... It’s not too dissimilar to what 'white' Europeans did to the indigenous peoples of the Americas."

And then, remembering that my colleagues and I are working hard to stop the brutal culling of mule deer in central British Columbia, because there are “too many,” I read the news article about 6,000 coyotes killed in Utah’s bounty program, in the hope that there will be more mule deer! They want more deer for the hunters to kill — the human hunters who don’t need to — so the coyotes are slaughtered in absurdly high numbers.

This brutality extends toward our own species. I also read about the horrific case of three young women held captive, raped and abused, in Cleveland, while the story of the terrorist bombing in the Boston Marathon lingered. Isolated incidents involving a few deranged individuals, of course, but also waiting for me was more news from the civil war in Syria, and lest we get all self-righteous, news of a book just out about the detention, also for a decade, of prisoners in Guantanamo never having found guilty of anything other than being of the wrong religion and in the wrong place at the wrong time, held without trial.

What is it about us? Why are so many of us so heartless?

Why is the term “do-gooder” seen as derogatory?

We are to accept that brutal side of our nature in the interest of ... what?

We’re rapidly, recklessly destroying so much, including our planet’s ability to sustain us, and our own ability to survive. We are capable of better. We are the most brutal of species, and never more so than when we reach out to others, our own and other species, to maim and kill.

Barry Kent MacKay
Born Free USA
Zoocheck Inc.

Time to Rehome Springwater Park Animals

Along with Springwater Provincial Park’s status being changed to non-operational (meaning visitor services are no longer being offered), the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) announced that the animals in the Park’s wildlife zoo would be dispersed to more appropriate accommodation elsewhere. That move is supported by major animal welfare and wildlife protection groups and will almost certainly be applauded by animal loving Ontarians everywhere.

While Springwater’s animal display may have been considered acceptable years ago, that is not the case today. The facility is out of date, inadequate and does not provide many of the animals with an acceptable level of welfare.

The closure of Springwater’s antiquated wildlife zoo fits in with evolving public concerns and sensibilities about animals. In recent years, a series of professional polls have shown that 82% of Ontario citizens support better regulation of wildlife in captivity facilities and improved standards of care. A review of some of the ongoing wildlife captivity controversies in the province is clear evidence that public attitudes are rapidly changing.

Some Springwater visitors seem to have developed a sentimental attachment to the animal display and overlook or fail to recognize its deficiencies. Many have erroneously referred to it as an animal sanctuary. Unfortunately, the display does not satisfy the basic criteria that define true sanctuaries, including restricted public access. Even though it is in a park, the wildlife compound is a zoo.

Advocates of a new Springwater governance model have referred to the wildlife zoo as an attraction and part of the future “revenue stream.” However, to upgrade the facility to an acceptable standard that fully satisfies the animals’ needs would require a substantial influx of funds and result in escalated, ongoing operational costs for whomever is in charge. It’s highly unlikely the zoo could ever generate more than token revenue for the Park and it’s doubtful the capital costs of bringing the facility up to standard could ever be recouped. The reality is that many zoos and zoo-type displays require annual subsidies to survive and ongoing government funding for capital/infrastructure improvements.

As well, the Springwater animals are all common species in Ontario and well represented in zoological facilities throughout the province, including some in the region. There is nothing unique about the Park’s zoo that would make it an attraction and draw people through the gate. In fact, considering current public sentiment, it may keep them away.

While we question the need to increase attendance beyond that required for the simple maintenance of visitor amenities, there are many ways to increase attendance if that is a goal. They include, but are not limited to, interpretive pavilions focused on local nature and history, a native wildlife butterfly garden, a bird feeder trail, a series of self-guided walks focusing on botany, ecology, local history and other subjects, organized insect safaris for kids, nature festivals and other special events, to name just a few ideas. The suggestion that the Park needs a bunch of caged animals to attract people ignores the fact that so much more could be offered.

As a wildlife protection organization, our interest has been and will continue to be the welfare of the Springwater animals. That’s why we are encouraging the MNR to move forward with the closure of the Park’s wildlife zoo and the dispersal of the animals to more appropriate accommodation elsewhere. It shouldn’t be a difficult process. We hope that others who are also concerned about wildlife will contact David Orazietti, Minister of Natural Resources, and urge him to move forward with relocation of the animals. The Minister's email is dorazietti.mpp@liberal.ola.org.

The closure of Springwater's wildlife zoo will be applauded by Ontarians across the province and by wildlife advocates everywhere. But the best reason for moving ahead is that it’s the right thing to do for the animals and the right time to do it.

Rob Laidlaw
Zoocheck Inc.

No Diplomacy for Pandas

A great deal of excitement surrounded the recent arrival of two giant pandas to the Toronto Zoo. On loan from the Chinese government, the bears are meant to celebrate the new foreign investment agreement between Canada and China. This is a practice known as panda diplomacy, whereby an endangered animal species native to China is shipped across the world to symbolize a kinship between humans. Politics aside, the issue of putting live animals on display as a symbol of diplomatic relations between countries is surely an outmoded practice in this day and age, when animal rights and welfare are increasingly a matter of public debate and of growing importance in Canada's legal system. Given our knowledge of animal psychology and behaviour, it is no longer possible for us to ignore the ethical wrong of keeping animals captive in our country's zoos and aquariums.

There has been much controversy in Canada recently over the question of animal welfare in zoos and aquariums, and whether certain species should continue to be held in these facilities. Last April the Supreme Court rejected an appeal to the City of Edmonton’s decision to keep a single remaining elephant at the zoo, despite a widespread campaign to have her transferred to a larger habitat where she could socialize with other elephants. In Ontario the fate of the three remaining elephants at the Toronto Zoo has been an ongoing battle for over three years, while the OSPCA continues to investigate allegations of neglect and mistreatment at Niagara Falls’ MarineLand.

The main lesson to be culled from the problems surrounding our zoos and aquariums is that we need to rethink our practice of keeping animals in captivity for the purpose of exhibition. Proponents of zoos and aquariums often cite two reasons for upholding these institutions, education and conservation, but both arguments are flawed.

Given the rise in animal rights activism and research into the physical and psychological impact of captivity, the lessons we teach our children through zoos say more about our understanding of animals as objects -- or, more simply, our disregard for that impact. As an example we can look to Koshik, the elephant at South Korea’s Everland Zoo who learned to imitate human speech. While the media largely represented this phenomenon as a heartwarming story, the scientists who published their findings in Current Biology speculate that in fact Koshik learned human words out of social deprivation from other members of his species, having spent seven years as the sole elephant at the zoo. Koshik learned to mimic the language of his keepers because it was his only hope at communication. The authors of the study also speculate that social deprivation could be a factor in other cases of animals who “talk” in captivity.

Why then are we misunderstanding their attempts at communication? And how can we purport to use zoos and aquariums as resources to teach people about the lives of animals when we deprive them of their social groups and natural habitats?

The argument for conservation should also be disputed. Indeed many zoos breed animals with dwindling populations in the hopes of one day releasing them back into the wild; this is the stated intention of the Toronto Zoo regarding the incoming giant pandas. The problem, however, is that we can easily lose sight of the well-being of the animals themselves. There is little doubt that conservation can be a worthy cause, but what is often not discussed is the moral dilemma of imprisoning one animal for the potential future generations of animals that may or may not come to fruition. The issue is then whether our desire for conservation outweighs a captive animal's quality of life.

The intentions of most people who support or engage in conservation and zoo-keeping are generally well-meaning and compassionate, but the outcome for the animals involved is not always favourable. Countless studies in animal behavioural science have shown us how captive animals resort to stereotypic behaviours that are repetitive and obsessive in nature, as well as frequently self-destructive. While studies determining the stress impact on captive pandas have been few at this point, scientists have nonetheless reported a number of stereotypic behaviours in zoo pandas which include pacing, head-tossing, self-biting, and regurgitation (repeated vomiting and ingesting of the vomit). It could be argued that the frequency and intensity of such behaviours are augmented by poorer living conditions, but even the best zoos deprive animals like pandas of the space and natural stimulation they would get in the wild. No enrichment activities or increase in enclosure space can compare to the ability to roam free for kilometres on end.

To continue to sell zoos as entertainment is cruel. Moreover, the fact that the exhibits are often directed at young people poses a larger problem. What kind of lesson are we teaching when we encourage them to derive pleasure out of the deprivation of another living being? The time has come to end this practice and start exploring other ways to observe and interact with animals. Surely by the twenty-first century we can stop looking at them in cages.

Vanessa Robinson, PhD
Guest Blogger

Funds should go to conservation, not cages

Ever since I first learned about Google Alerts, I’ve been receiving dozens of links to articles about zoos on an almost daily basis. Over the past few years I’ve gotten in the habit of printing out articles about new zoo exhibits and the refurbishment of old zoo exhibits, especially if they indicate their cost.

I expect that anyone reading those articles in isolation say to themselves, “Wow, that’s a lot of money” and leave it at that. I suppose it’s a natural reaction since a great many new zoo exhibits range in price from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars, certainly a lot of money to most of us. But most people don’t think about the fact that zoos all over North America and around the world are engaged in the same kinds of expensive projects as their local or regional zoos are. And when you start to add up the costs, it’s mind blowing.

Here’s just a small sample of what I’ve come across in the past week or so. The National Zoo recently opened a new elephant exhibit that cost a whopping $56 million. The Oregon Zoo plans to exceed that with their own $58 million elephant exhibit. Meanwhile the Houston Zoo will open a $28 million gorilla exhibit in 2015, while this summer the Dakota Zoo will open a small primate exhibit that, by comparison, is dirt cheap at only $750,000. As I sat down to write this blog, another one came in. The Indianapolis Zoo is planning a $30 million orangutan exhibit. Those few projects come in at a staggering $172.75 million and that’s just the tip of the proverbial “new exhibit” iceberg.

About three years ago I added up all the zoo capital projects that were featured in articles in a 1 month period. I’m sure I didn’t see them all, but what I did see added up to $1.213 billion dollars. They’d house at most a few hundred individuals representing a motley assortment of species. All in the name of conservation.

Most of the zoo promotional material that’s used to rationalize these obscenely expensive exhibits feature vague claims about how important they are to public education, conservation and how they’ll produce a positive conservation outcome that will benefit animals and their wild habitats. Of course, most of that commentary is unsubstantiated, meaningless and self-serving. The reality is that most zoos talk the talk, but when it comes down to putting their money where their mouth is, they don’t do much to help. Instead, they construct monuments to waste and pat themselves on the back for doing it.

There are thousands of conservation projects around the world that are starving for funds. They’re aimed at preserving habitat, conducting anti-poaching patrols, mitigating human-wildlife conflict, fighting the wild animal parts trade and addressing a plethora of other concerns. Pick a handful of these projects at random, look at their cost and at what they can accomplish and it becomes abundantly clear why they should be funded and not the new zoo exhibits.

Rob Laidlaw
Zoocheck Inc.