If anything good can emerge from the heart-rending story of Marius, the 18-month-old giraffe killed yesterday at Copenhagen Zoo, it will be that the world knows more about captive breeding programmes.
Many people are distressed, perplexed and angry about the determination of a zoo to destroy a young animal born into its care. But at least Copenhagen Zoo was honest about the fate of this animal. In reality, culling happens regularly in zoos, while the public continue to pay their entrance fees in ignorance.
For example, we learned this weekend that six lions at Longleat Safari Park had been put down - an adult male called Henry, a lioness named Louisa and four of her cubs. A commentator on Zoo News Digest (“by a Zoo Professional for Zoo Professionals”) suggested that Longleat had made the right move in carrying out the euthanasia without any publicity: “It is too late now to have ridiculous offers to 'save' the animals concerned.”
Never ones to shirk being thought ridiculous, in 2010 OneKind protested to the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria – keepers of the studbook for the European Endangered Species Programme – about the culling of red river hog piglets in Edinburgh Zoo.
We were told:
“The topic of captive population management is not easy to explain. It goes beyond the individual animals and instead considers the zoo-kept population of the animals in question as a whole. Careful genetic analyses are carried out by experienced biologists to determine the best breeding patterns for a particular species. The aim is generally to maintain as much genetic diversity as possible within the population over an extended period of time. This – along with other factors related to the keeping capacity of EAZA members – can lead to non-breeding recommendations being issued for particular managed species.
“On the other hand, for welfare reasons it is sometimes considered appropriate to allow animals to breed even when their offspring are not needed for the management of the population. In these cases the animals are allowed to breed and to care for their offspring in the usual way, as they would in the wild. At an appropriate time, perhaps when the offspring would leave naturally in the wild, they are removed and either transferred or humanely culled.”
You will recall that a UK zoo offered to re-home Marius. We can only speculate as to Copenhagen Zoo’s reasons for refusing this offer, but a clue may be found in that EAZA response:
“The transfer of animals to institutions or sanctuaries that are not EAZA members can raise a number of potential problems. EAZA’s code of ethics requires that animal transfers outside the EAZA membership are only done where the destination institution meets the minimum standards that would be required of an EAZA member. As EAZA does not have formal relationships with sanctuaries, and therefore has not inspected or certified them, members cannot simply send surplus animals along when they cannot be certain that those responsible for the animals will have knowledge about how best to keep the animals.”
So now you know. Europe’s specialist zoo breeding programme believes that the greater good of the population is better served by allowing the animals to breed rather than engaging in birth control - but the resulting offspring can be culled if they, or their genes, are surplus to requirements.
OneKind might – just might – understand the rationale behind managing populations at the expense of individuals if it led to successful reintroductions and the consolidation of wild populations. We wouldn’t support keeping wild animals for exhibition but we could see the logic. But all it does is maintain collections of captives, sentient individuals who can pay a high price for their status. If opposing such a system makes us ridiculous, well, we can live with it.