Just Too Beastly for Words

By Jesse Birnbaum

History's first zoo keeper must have been one very busy conservationist, but at least he was spared the burdensome barbs of animal-rights activists, possibly because they were engaged in self-preservation. All Noah had to do was tend his passengers for 40 days and then turn them loose.

Today Noah would be plowing heavier seas. Not only are zoo managers concerned with the care of their charges, they are also concerned that the zoo, as an institution for research, education and preservation, is becoming as endangered as some of the animals it houses. Financial support has dropped, and costs keep climbing. Rising too is a clamor from critics who claim that zoos are no better than prisons, designed for the amusement of mindless gawkers. The more militant activists want to shut zoos down altogether.

Such is their zeal that a delegation from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) trooped into Washington's National Zoo last Christmas bearing gifts of exotic fruits to remind the beasts of the good old days back home. They serenaded the inmates with heartfelt renditions of God Rest Ye All the Animals and Let 'em Go (to the tune of Let It Snow).

Warthogwash! Michael Hutchins, director of conservation and science for the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, says the activists are "unrealistic and biologically naive; they are taking human moral precepts and trying to apply them to animals." That view, he adds, may have some merit when it is focused on domestic and farm creatures and even on the plight of laboratory animals, but it has no place in wildlife conservation. "We're trying to save animals from extinction," he says of the AAZPA, which includes 158 of the nation's best-known, most prestigious and carefully regulated zoos and aquariums. "If we were to follow the animal-rights ethic to the letter, it would be a disaster. It would lead to species extinction." Where the activists may have a point, he says, concerns conditions at 1,400 roadside menageries, traveling shows and petting zoos around the country, many of which are substandard and, rightly, ought to be shuttered.

But no such distinctions exist for many activists, who believe zoo keepers are guilty of "speciesism," the movement's politically correct counterpart to racism. Animals, PETA insists, are no different from people and should be treated accordingly. "There really is no rational reason for saying a human being has special rights," says PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, whose credo is "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy."

This means, among other things, that incarceration in a penned environment -- or even an unpenned one, in the most modern and progressive of zoos -- inflicts unacceptable psychological and even physical harm on animals, all to provide diversion for Homo sapiens. Such treatment, say activists, cannot be justified by any beneficial services that zoos perform.

At the extreme, some zoophobes suggest that the extinction of endangered species is preferable to confinement. In the essay "Against Zoos," University of Colorado philosopher Dale Jamieson asks, "Is it really better to confine a few hapless Mountain Gorillas in a zoo than to permit the species to become extinct? . . . If it is true that we are inevitably moving toward a world in which Mountain Gorillas can survive only in zoos, then we must ask whether it is really better for them to live in artificial environments of our design than not to be born at all."

The answer is yes, it is better. The globe is losing valuable species day by day; 20% to 50% of the world's biological diversity may be gone before the end of the next century, and the irony is that human beings will have contributed overwhelmingly to that loss. The human population is expected to nearly double within the next few decades. For Third World agrarian economies especially, the competition for space and resources will grow during this "demographic winter," and the losers will be wild animals.

In fact, what was once called the wild hardly exists anymore. Even some of the great African game preserves are little more than fenced megazoos. The vast spaces required by such predatory species as leopards, for example, have been reduced to fragments occupied by ever smaller animal populations. This often leads to a loss of genetic diversity of species and an increase in infant mortality.

The response to this depletion, argue the zoo managers, is controlled breeding in captivity, which has already wrought remarkable success. The London Zoo has bred the rare Pere David's deer of China and the Arabian Oryx and reintroduced them to their native habitats. The San Diego Zoo, which houses more than 150 species on the endangered list and has returned a dozen of them to the wild, recently produced triplet Sumatran tigers. Working with the Los Angeles Zoo, San Diego has also had spectacular results with the rare California condor. A sparse flock of 16 has grown to 50, and some may be returned this fall to the mountains near Ventura.

That's not good enough for the activists. They suggest that folks who want to see animals should instead visit the wild places. San Diego Zoo spokesman Jeff Jouatt did that very thing earlier this year. In Kenya he saw five rhinoceroses snuffling about in a game park. They were surrounded by 10 vans filled with tourists. That wasn't so bad, he was told. Usually the rhinos perform for 50 vans. God rest ye merry, rhinos.

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London and Anne Hopkins/New York