It's a tricky one. These days mass extinction events seem to lend a pro to zoos, enabling them to 'save' the gene pool of endangered animals. Education is also important - yeah children a love of animals and personal experience with them and they're more likely to be am advocate for them.
Zoo-m out, pun intended, and it's another example of how fucked up humanity is. We are okay with eating meat, having no consideration for how, say, cows are treated (see @fermentedphil beautiful cow 🐮 post this week) but can cry that zoos are important to save animals? How about we save them in our own fields? And plains, and oceans, and savannah, and tundra...
But. Still. There's a lot of good being done by some zoos from a conservation and animal advocacy perspective.
My husband grew up running round Whipsnade as a child, after hours with the gates shut as his grandfather lived in the managers cottage inside the grounds and was caretaker. So he has very strong, fond memories of zoos, a fierce love of animals, and a resistance to most zoos whilst appreciating 'the good ones'.
Funny enough we are going to Melbourne Zoo on Sunday. Haven't been in years. A little reluctant. They do swap the larger animals with Werribee Open Range zoo, which is good... The African big animals get a vast range there. But still, it's a complex thing, is it not, to zoo or not to zoo.
I'll probably have more to say about it next week!
I used to love going to zoos. That was one of the things my husband and I had in common--a love of animals. However, once I had the sense of them as sad places, I couldn't do it anymore. Everything in its time.
I also don't feel very good about eating meat. I never choose it or buy it for myself. But if my husband is eating it, I steal a piece, guiltily.
We are not perfect. We try to live conscientiously in a cruel world, but it's not a straight path. One thing I know for sure, lecturing people won't change minds, so I try stuff like this. Cute collages and gentle arguments.
Certainly, the culture has come a long way from my childhood (back in the 50s!!) when all my aunts competed to have the biggest and the best fur stoles. We are making progress. Now we have the Nonhuman Rights Project, which has litigated the rights of confined animals in court.
I hope you enjoy your trip. It won't help the animals if you feel miserable :))
Thank so much for stopping by. I very much appreciated your description of 'running round Whipsnade'. I'm a country girl myself. My playground was a forest, a stream and mountain :)
That sounds just divine. WHere was that, then?
Yes, it's more complex than simple yes/no arguments, that's for sure. Gentle and open is the way to be.
Historically, zoos have been places of abuse, but I think much has changed, especially in the west, where there's more regulation and accountabiliy, and, perhaps, much more funding. I guess we can ethically justify anything, right? I WILL enjoy Sunday - it'll be nice to spend time with family for a change. Covid's been constantly keeping us apart.
I guess we can ethically justify anything, right?
😇
Hudson River Valley, in the foothills of an Appalachian range, the Shawangunk mountains. It was 'divine'. So close to nature it became a part of me. And yet, it was brutal. Very difficult circumstances. My only comforts were the forest, the stream and the mountain :))
For me, nothing is more important. Enjoy every moment.
Oh gosh. I hear so much about that area. The biodiversity there sounds extraordinary. I've heard so much about the medicinal plants in the area, the folk lore, the music, the mountain folk. I have never been to America but boy would I like to visit there.
I am sorry about your hardship. I find it so incredible how often nature holds space for us, gives us peace, calms our fraught nervous system, teaches and raises us. It certainly seems like it was family for you - a solace when life's brutality was too much.
You have a heart my friend. And yes, you would love it. Appalachians are one of the oldest ranges in the world. Quite primitive, and beautiful.
This is my exact argument. Why not use some of the lands we essentially "stole" from these animals so that they can rewild it? It is a shame that we can just take land and not think about the loss of life. For example, here where I live we have vast amounts of fields that are used for canola, corn, and wheat. But people cry about the rainforests that are being cut down. Meanwhile, our rainforests were cut down about 50 years ago without a tear.
My two cents about zoos, especially seeing all the African animals, they are used to vast grassy planes. I cannot even begin to think how they feel in smallish enclosures. I remember a story about apes in an enclosure. They put too many inside for in the wild their numbers per square meter would have been much less. Some of the apes, if I remember correctly, died and got sick as a kind of response to the unnatural number of them so close together.
We think we know so much, but in our attempts to be smart we are actually very stupid.
Sorry for the unasked for two cents opinion. 😅😅
No need to apologise - I think we all agree!