How Many Animals Are Killed Each Day In Zoos

Alternative IN CAPTIVITY

In early 2014, Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark announced that it planned to kill a healthy young male giraffe named Marius, on the grounds that he was genetically as well similar to other individuals in the European convict breeding programme. Although Marius potentially had decades of life alee of him, his fate was decided on the fact that he was related to too many other giraffes in zoos in Europe.

Despite protests and offers to rehome Marius, he was shot in February 2014, and his body was publicly dissected before parts were fed to the Zoo'due south carnivores. Built-in Free spoke out widely, condemning the incident and calling for a review of culling policies in zoos.

Throughout the ensuing global outcry, questions were asked nigh how widespread the practice of killing healthy animals is in zoos. Opinions and reports ranged wildly, with disputed manufacture estimates reporting that between three,000 and v,000 healthy animals are killed across European zoos every year.

Closer to home, information technology was not articulate whether or not culling of healthy animals was a feature of zoos in the UK. Occasional reports of culling in British zoos had surfaced previously (for example, cerise river hogs at Edinburgh Zoo in 2010) just for the most part the situation in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland was largely unknown.

British zoos are supposed to maintain individual animal records, and make these records available for inspection past zoo inspectors. However, in my PhD inquiry examining 192 British zoos, more than one quarter were plant to be non-compliant with animate being recordkeeping criteria at inspection.

Zoos should besides submit an annual animate being inventory to their licensing authority which should include, among other things, the number of animals of each species that died in the preceding 12 months – but it does non include the cause of any deaths. Furthermore, my PhD research has shown that well-nigh one-half of British zoos failed to provide total annual beast inventory information to their local authority.

So, in general terms, it seems that the key authorities, licensing authorities and zoo inspectors are in the dark surrounding the prevalence of causes of deaths of animals in zoos; and only individual zoos themselves know if and when animals are culled.

Zoo membership associations such equally BIAZA and EAZA, and collaborative bodies such equally Species360 may collect relevant information on animal deaths but just from participating zoos (thought to exist a minority) and more chiefly this information is not available to the public.

Merely at present nosotros have another glimpse into the problem: in a study of mortality of Eurasian lynx (a medium-sized wild cat) in United kingdom zoos between 2000–2015, researchers from the Purple Veterinary College in London have revealed that alternative was the leading cause of decease, accounting for 21% of the deaths in the lynx population. While it involved relatively few animals overall (eight), the fact that more than one in five of the population was killed while salubrious for reasons of space and genetics is shocking. Is this figure representative of other species in UK zoos? If information technology is, or even if that figure is a fraction of 21%, the scale of slaughter would exist immense given the huge number of animals in zoos.

Built-in Free is very concerned that zoos have been permitted to operate with relative impunity despite growing evidence of unethical and unpopular practices. That is why we must phone call on the governments beyond the UK (zoo legislation is devolved to the governments of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) to ensure that, at the very least, zoos brand summary information on the causes of death of their animals available to the public.

The current legal framework in Great britain permits zoos to operate under licence, and places requirements on zoos to meet minimum standards in animal welfare, conservation, educational activity and other considerations. The British public – some zoo-goers, some not – should have a take a chance to make an informed decision about the merit and ethical ground (or lack thereof) of zoos. The debate on the function of zoos continues to rage, but will merely be resolved when the facts are made public. Without a legal requirement for transparency in zoo activities, we gamble connected defoliation, compromise and controversy.

ZOOS & AQUARIA

Source: https://www.bornfree.org.uk/blog/culling-captivity

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