Breeding elephants
Jul. 23rd, 2005 07:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gemfyre$14 million has recently been put into importing 8-10 Asian elephants to Australian zoos and providing appropriate housing for them. This has a caused an uproar on the Birds Australia e-mail list (which like all e-mail lists/newsgroups/message boards just ends up as a place for people to whinge). Many there are anti-zoo (including one of my workmates, who has written in the thread) and wonder why the money didn’t go into saving Australian animals and/or providing reserve space in the elephant’s native countries.
Giday birders,
I have been following the story about the importation of Elephants into Australia with more than a little interest. I will state that I don't know anything about elephant conservation other than what I have heard in the media over the last few days, so I may have the story completely wrong.
Anyway, the federal environment minister has given approval for 8 - 10 asian elephants to be imported into Australia for a captive breeding program being planned by several zoos, including Taronga in Sydney. Apparently they (Taronga) are spending $14 million on a 2.5 Ha enclosure for them. Other zoos are also involved, all saying that this will be wonderful for conservation of the species, which one report said there were only 35 000 left in the wild.
My question is this. How is captive breeding (which apparently hasn't worked very well for elephants in the past) in Australia really going to help these beasts? I dare say the problems faced by Asian Elephants are more to do with habitat destruction than lack of breeding success. But more importantly, how much conservation of Australian wildlife could be done with $14 million, plus transport costs, plus the amounts spent by other zoos. Sure elephants are worth conserving, but when conservation dollars are hard to come by, why not be a little smarter with those dollars.
How much land in the Capertee valley could be bought and revegetated for Regent Honeyeater habitat, a bird whose numbers are significantly lower than 35 000. How about hairy nosed wombats, even easier than Regent He, as they don't move around so much?
Or is it just me?
Cheers
Graham Turner
I wanted to respond. Explaining that indeed, while saving Australia’s animals is a worthy and necessary cause and the government should put a lot more money into it, at a zoo it’s the elephant who gets the publicity – not a creature like say, a dibbler, which is awfully cute and endearing (and endangered), but small and kept in the nocturnal house and you MIGHT be lucky to see it come out of it’s hidey-hole in there, even if people are sensible and follow the rules and tell their kids to quit screaming and stop using bloody flash photography in there. I also know that Perth Zoo is involved in this program. They’ve most likely completed the new, improved elephant enclosure now and Silup – the breeding (and temperamental) male can now have a proper spacious enclosure instead of being cooped up in a pen behind the female elephants and occasionally being let into the large pen when they are elsewhere.
Anyway, the curator of Taronga Zoo replied beautifully, so I didn’t have to.
I hesitate to comment here, partly because of my position, and partly because elephants seems a bit off topic, but if I may be allowed a personal observation there are some points that need clarification.
Conservation is a far more complicated subject than the few lines in a newspaper, or sound grab on the news, would lead the public to believe. We, as zoo curators, cringe every time we hear that a 'captive breeding program' is going to save such and such a species. To start with, there are different kinds of breeding program and they have different goals. It's relatively easy to breed and release, and this is the kind of program we engage in with NPWS, or some other wildlife agency. The kind of program we are talking about with elephants is a 'preservation' program, a plan to retain behavioural integrity and genetic variation for a long period, usually 100 years, in captivity. This kind of program is complicated, expensive and of uncertain outcome. It assumes there will be habitat for the species in a hundred years time. It assumes that humankind will have brought its population under control and that attitudes will have changed. It assumes that careful and continuous genetic management will enable the captive population to retain most (our target is 90%) of the genetic variation in the wild population (at the time of sampling). It also assumes that humans can focus on one project for 100 years, which in itself is a long shot. There are few human endeavours that span generations (since the pyramids anyway).
Nonetheless, we aim to manage any species in our collection that has an IUCN threat status for retained genetic heterozygocity. Lions, tigers, lemurs, gibbons etc.. We do this because there is no other way. Many of these species will not survive this century in the wild. If future generations are to see a Sumatran Tiger on the slopes of Kerinci, the species will have to be nursed through this century (and make no mistake, a tiger in captivity, how ever good the care, is not a substitute for a tiger in the wild).
Because in the end conservation isn't about money and reserves, it's about people and attitudes. The money keeps a species alive from day to day but people secure its future. On paper, Indonesia has quite a good reserve system. In reality the locals see reserves as good places to poach, log, and plant. (And quite frankly I don't blame them. I am quickly irritated by the rich telling the poor to stay poor. If we privileged few in Australia, fat and careless as we are, end up living in a wasted continent, at least it's our fault. Pity the millions living in the Ganges delta who will be looking for higher ground as sea levels rise.)
Which is why elephants coming to Australia isn't just (or even mostly) about captive breeding. It's really about the 1.2 million visitors who visit Taronga. No one who has stood in the shadow of an elephant would countenance their extinction. If a fraction of our visitors left the zoo with slightly more inclination to vote green, with slightly more inclination to recycle water (trying to stay topical here), and with a slightly heightened sense of the impending loss, I'd bring in elephants by the truck load. The reality is that there is not much room left for wildlife and that the first victims will be the big stuff. As an adolescent I didn't much mind what happened to a species once I'd seen it. Now I recognise we have some obligations to future generations. To do what we can, however desperate.
Paul Andrew
Curator
Taronga Zoo
Giday birders,
I have been following the story about the importation of Elephants into Australia with more than a little interest. I will state that I don't know anything about elephant conservation other than what I have heard in the media over the last few days, so I may have the story completely wrong.
Anyway, the federal environment minister has given approval for 8 - 10 asian elephants to be imported into Australia for a captive breeding program being planned by several zoos, including Taronga in Sydney. Apparently they (Taronga) are spending $14 million on a 2.5 Ha enclosure for them. Other zoos are also involved, all saying that this will be wonderful for conservation of the species, which one report said there were only 35 000 left in the wild.
My question is this. How is captive breeding (which apparently hasn't worked very well for elephants in the past) in Australia really going to help these beasts? I dare say the problems faced by Asian Elephants are more to do with habitat destruction than lack of breeding success. But more importantly, how much conservation of Australian wildlife could be done with $14 million, plus transport costs, plus the amounts spent by other zoos. Sure elephants are worth conserving, but when conservation dollars are hard to come by, why not be a little smarter with those dollars.
How much land in the Capertee valley could be bought and revegetated for Regent Honeyeater habitat, a bird whose numbers are significantly lower than 35 000. How about hairy nosed wombats, even easier than Regent He, as they don't move around so much?
Or is it just me?
Cheers
Graham Turner
I wanted to respond. Explaining that indeed, while saving Australia’s animals is a worthy and necessary cause and the government should put a lot more money into it, at a zoo it’s the elephant who gets the publicity – not a creature like say, a dibbler, which is awfully cute and endearing (and endangered), but small and kept in the nocturnal house and you MIGHT be lucky to see it come out of it’s hidey-hole in there, even if people are sensible and follow the rules and tell their kids to quit screaming and stop using bloody flash photography in there. I also know that Perth Zoo is involved in this program. They’ve most likely completed the new, improved elephant enclosure now and Silup – the breeding (and temperamental) male can now have a proper spacious enclosure instead of being cooped up in a pen behind the female elephants and occasionally being let into the large pen when they are elsewhere.
Anyway, the curator of Taronga Zoo replied beautifully, so I didn’t have to.
I hesitate to comment here, partly because of my position, and partly because elephants seems a bit off topic, but if I may be allowed a personal observation there are some points that need clarification.
Conservation is a far more complicated subject than the few lines in a newspaper, or sound grab on the news, would lead the public to believe. We, as zoo curators, cringe every time we hear that a 'captive breeding program' is going to save such and such a species. To start with, there are different kinds of breeding program and they have different goals. It's relatively easy to breed and release, and this is the kind of program we engage in with NPWS, or some other wildlife agency. The kind of program we are talking about with elephants is a 'preservation' program, a plan to retain behavioural integrity and genetic variation for a long period, usually 100 years, in captivity. This kind of program is complicated, expensive and of uncertain outcome. It assumes there will be habitat for the species in a hundred years time. It assumes that humankind will have brought its population under control and that attitudes will have changed. It assumes that careful and continuous genetic management will enable the captive population to retain most (our target is 90%) of the genetic variation in the wild population (at the time of sampling). It also assumes that humans can focus on one project for 100 years, which in itself is a long shot. There are few human endeavours that span generations (since the pyramids anyway).
Nonetheless, we aim to manage any species in our collection that has an IUCN threat status for retained genetic heterozygocity. Lions, tigers, lemurs, gibbons etc.. We do this because there is no other way. Many of these species will not survive this century in the wild. If future generations are to see a Sumatran Tiger on the slopes of Kerinci, the species will have to be nursed through this century (and make no mistake, a tiger in captivity, how ever good the care, is not a substitute for a tiger in the wild).
Because in the end conservation isn't about money and reserves, it's about people and attitudes. The money keeps a species alive from day to day but people secure its future. On paper, Indonesia has quite a good reserve system. In reality the locals see reserves as good places to poach, log, and plant. (And quite frankly I don't blame them. I am quickly irritated by the rich telling the poor to stay poor. If we privileged few in Australia, fat and careless as we are, end up living in a wasted continent, at least it's our fault. Pity the millions living in the Ganges delta who will be looking for higher ground as sea levels rise.)
Which is why elephants coming to Australia isn't just (or even mostly) about captive breeding. It's really about the 1.2 million visitors who visit Taronga. No one who has stood in the shadow of an elephant would countenance their extinction. If a fraction of our visitors left the zoo with slightly more inclination to vote green, with slightly more inclination to recycle water (trying to stay topical here), and with a slightly heightened sense of the impending loss, I'd bring in elephants by the truck load. The reality is that there is not much room left for wildlife and that the first victims will be the big stuff. As an adolescent I didn't much mind what happened to a species once I'd seen it. Now I recognise we have some obligations to future generations. To do what we can, however desperate.
Paul Andrew
Curator
Taronga Zoo
