In Search of Eden – Chapter 2

Before there were Zoos

Clara was orphaned as an infant, but raised in elegant surroundings in a well-to-do household in India. By the age of eight, she had sailed more than ten thousand miles from Calcutta to Rotterdam, complements of the Dutch East India Company, and had begun a tour of Europe that would have been impressive by any measure – but in the 1740’s it was downright astonishing, especially considering that Clara was an Indian rhinoceros. Her story was chronicled in the book Clara’s Grand Tour by Glynis Ridley.

People have been capturing wild animals and bringing them into captivity for as long as we have had the capacity to do so. Part of the plunder of early explorers was a selection of the strange creatures that inhabited far-off lands. It seems that there is something in our nature that causes us to be fascinated by the rare and unusual.

 The first giraffe ever seen in France, according to Michael Allin in his 1998 book Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris, was a royal offering from Muhammad Ali of Egypt to King Charles X of France. Her name was Zarafa, the Arabic word for giraffe, and she had already traveled two thousand miles down the Nile and across the Mediterranean by the time she arrived in Europe in October of 1826. The young, female had been captured by Arab hunters in Sudan, taken to Khartoum on the back of a camel, and transported by boat down the Nile to Alexandria. She sailed to Europe standing in the hold of a ship with her head protruding through a hole cut in the deck and walked from Marseille to Paris. Zarafa was presented to the King of France in Paris on July 9^th, 1827 and took up residence in the Jardin des Plantes. She was seen by over 600,000 visitors in the first six months alone. This behavior of the French people may seem excessive, but it was not unlike the response to circus menageries in America fifty years later.

The Animal Trade

In the mid-19^th century, as the international trading companies began to fade, a new type of animal dealer appeared. Capitalizing on the proliferation of zoological gardens in Europe, the animal trade picked up in the early 1860s and German seafood dealer, Carl Hagenbeck Sr., was ready to step in.

Hagenbeck family legend has it that his animal trade began with six harbor seals caught in a fisherman’s net and dumped with the rest of the take on the doorsteps of the Hamburg fishmonger. Whether this is true or not, Hagenbeck certainly maintained a small animal dealership, along with his wholesale seafood business, through the 1850's. His animal dealership continued to prosper until it became wholly independent of the seafood store in about 1863. 

Hagenbeck’s eldest son, Carl Junior, expanded the animal dealership. In 1874, he moved the business from its crowded quarters to a small zoo in Hamburg which included a lion house, an elephant house, a monkey house, a reptile house, and a birds of prey aviary. In the 1890's, Hagenbeck revolutionized the zoo business when he created his first "panorama" exhibit, a concept he later patented and expanded. He surrounded animal exhibits with water moats and empty pits that he determined the animals could not cross. These moats allowed people to look across an expanse of the zoo and see many animals at once, as if in the wild. Hagenbeck junior died in 1913 and was succeeded by his sons Heinrich and Lorenz who kept the firm solvent until it went out of business shortly after the First World War.

Hagenbeck wasn’t the only animal dealer profiting by the proliferation of European zoos and American circuses in the mid-1800’s, and there is even some question about whether he was the largest. When the menagerie of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Fairgrieve was auctioned in Edinburgh Scotland in 1872, a local newspaper reported that the buyers were a Mr. Jamrach “the most extensive dealer in wild animals in the world” and “Jamrach’s almost equally great rival”, Mr. Reiche. Both Jamrach and Reiche had shops which were packed from floor to ceiling with exotic animals of every stripe. The Reiche Brothers were well known animal dealers in New York who dealt primarily with circus menageries. Jamrach operated out of an office in London.

Jamrach’s Menagerie

Author, Carol Birch, imagines the atmosphere of one of those old shops in her 2011 novel, Jamrach's Menagerie. The story is told through the eyes of eight-year-old Jaffy Brown who comes face to face with an escaped tiger in the streets of 1857 London and lives to tell about it.

 

As a result of the encounter, Jaffy was drawn to work in the shop of the tiger’s owner, animal importer Charles Jamrach. Though a work of fiction, the author conjures a vision of what those animal emporiums must have been like.

On Jaffy’s first visit to Jamrach’s shop he describes the air as “heavy, lush and rotting, filled with traces of bowels and blood and piss and hair, and something overall I could not name, which I suppose was wildness”. The shop, as imagined by Birch, would likely have had many rooms stockpiled in conditions that would be considered inhumane by modern standards but in the context of the mid-nineteenth century, would have been quite acceptable. There might well have been a parrot room (“a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes”), other quieter bird rooms, rooms with monkeys, rooms with reptiles, and an outdoor space out back for the large animals like camels, baby elephants, and big cats.  The animal business was, in those days, a heartless, brutal affair in which animals were little more than a commodity. A customer was anyone who had money – a wealthy landowner, a monarch, or, in America at least, a circus.

In Search of Eden - Chapter 1

Busch Gardens & A Career in the Zoo Business

In the spring of 1970, I underwent a transformation. I was attending Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, fortunate to be completing my junior year on a basketball scholarship and, though I was studying Biology, I had no idea what I wanted to pursue upon graduation.

One of our regular activities every spring was to make the two hour drive north to Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium for an Atlanta Braves baseball game. The trips to Atlanta usually came with some time to kill. We often found ourselves at the shops and nightclubs of Underground Atlanta but on this trip, for some reason, we ended up at the Atlanta Zoo. This was a life-changing experience for me. I had never been to a zoo and I was well and truly hooked by the experience. Their famous gorilla, Willie B, was nine years old. The World of Reptiles building was state-of-the-art and would stand until it was replaced 44 years later. I saw elephants, big cats, apes, and bears. I was amazed at the varieties of birds and reptiles. And it occurred to me that this was a place I would like to work. This would be my career.

That summer, I gave up my scholarship and transferred to the University of South Florida in Tampa, where I eventually earned my degree in zoology. I held a series of menial, part-time positions at Busch Gardens that included gardener and monorail driver, before I landed that coveted position in the zoo department. It was a job that elicited passion, compassion, and a good measure of excitement and danger. I did not realize it at the time, but I was fortunate to receive my early training at one of the best zoos in the world – a zoo that, in fact, was far ahead of its time. Busch Gardens opened in late 1950’s as a beer-tasting area and tropical bird garden adjacent to the brewery. In the mid-1960’s, the attraction opened a large expanse of sandy, open pasture that resembled the Serengeti Plains of Africa. It was, as I recall, a hundred-or-so acres of hoofed animal pastures divided by long, meandering waterways. The larger, dangerous animals were contained behind deep, hidden dry-moats. Most of it was only accessible to visitors by monorail.

My first job at the Gardens was hosing debris and duck poop off of what seemed like miles of sidewalks that meandered through the gardens. After a summer driving the monorail, I eventually worked my way into the zoo department. Here is how I described my job in a March 1973 letter of application for a position at the Metro Toronto Zoo:

For the last 16 months I have worked the 4:00 – midnight shift in order that I might pursue my studies in the daytime. The first part of my night is involved in feeding and returning all display animals to their nighttime quarters. My partner and I are responsible for lions, leopards, cheetahs, river and pigmy hippos, black and white rhinos, cape buffaloes, baboons, gorillas, chimpanzees, gibbons, and okapi. Myself and two other men are responsible for walking the large male and 4 female African elephants to their nighttime quarters. The remainder of my evening is spent alone, patrolling pastures and inspecting herds of giraffe, zebra, antelope, and gazelles. Often my responsibilities include assisting in difficult births, bottle-feeding babies who can’t nurse, assisting the zoo veterinarian, and effecting emergency repairs on equipment whenever necessary.

Fearsome Creatures

It was great training because, while keepers at most zoos would have a defined area of responsibility, I had an opportunity to work with nearly every animal in the collection. And some of them were quite memorable, even more than forty years later.

Chimp Island, for example, was intimidating to a young zookeeper because our access was by boat and we were trapped on an island with one of the most fearsome animals in the park – the male chimp named Bamboo. The boat was a flat-bottomed, aluminum john-boat which was fastened to a rope that stretched from shore to shore. We pulled ourselves over to a cave-like opening in the rockwork that was protected from the chimps by an elaborate array of electrified wires. Once inside the holding area, Bamboo greeted us every day with his threat display of foot stomping, hooting and screaming, culminating in a shower of poop that he scooped up from the floor in a smooth underhand motion that peppered us with deadly accuracy.  The experienced hands knew to duck out of the doorway at the right moment, a technique that they failed to mention to the new guy. What made Bamboo even more frightening was his reputation. A few years earlier, a zookeeper had his calf muscle bitten off when Bamboo had crossed the hot wire surrounding the entrance and entered the night house behind him.

We had other fearsome animals, like the male Cape buffalo who, after I let him out of his night house one morning and closed the massive, steel sliding door, turned around and hit the door with such force that he sent it swinging up on its overhead track. The bottom track, which had been anchored into the concrete, came flying into the middle of the room.

A more subtle, but no less deadly creature was the quiet female African leopard, who would remain timidly snarling at the back of her night quarters every evening when I shoved her meat under the bars of her cage. One evening I dropped the empty meat bag in the gutter that ran along the front of her cage. When I casually reached down to retrieve it, she bolted from the back of the cage in the blink of an eye and hooked my hand with her claws. Fortunately for me, she only got me with one claw which dug into the fleshy part of my left hand leaving a scar that reminds me of that close call to this day.

An Emotional Commitment to Zoos

In the fall of 1971, Busch Gardens Tampa won the prestigious Edward H. Bean Award in the mammal category for the first captive breeding of the roan antelope. The Bean Award was presented by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (currently known as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums – AZA) in recognition of a significant captive propagation effort that clearly enhanced the conservation of the species. The roan is a medium-sized, African antelope that stands about five feet at the shoulder and weighs in at five or six hundred pounds. It is light brown all over with the most distinctive markings being the black mask that covers most of the face. Ears are long and pointed, and horns are short, stout, and swept-back in a gentle backward arch. I was proud of the award, even though I had only worked at the Gardens for less than a month. I loved hoofed stock and this award, according to the criteria, was supposed to “demonstrate an exceptional institutional commitment”. So imagine my disappointment when it was announced the very next year that a new attraction was to swallow-up the roan antelope breeding pen. The section of the park known as "Stanleyville" opened in 1973 and was home to the park's first water ride, the Stanley Falls Flume. Animals, it appeared, would need to take a backseat to rides and other attractions as Busch Gardens faced some stiff competition up Interstate-4 in Orlando where Walt Disney was opening his new Magic Kingdom. As an aspiring young zookeeper, it was time for me to move on.

“The emotional commitment to zoos,” George Leposky wrote in his 1972 article, “which motivates Porter’s strivings is widespread among devotees of zoos – employees and visitors alike. It complicates immeasurably the debate over zoos’ continued existence, for the old cliché about love being blind applies. The blind sport which Porter shares with most supporters of zoos is an unwillingness to admit that the reasons he gives in defense of their survival are less a description of reality than a vision of what zoos could and should become.”

A Chimp Named Herman

Nowhere is this vision better illustrated than with the other individual in that long-ago article, a youngster named Herman. He was just a little guy in 1972 – about six years old – and he did not deserve to be behind bars. A photo of him in the St. Petersburg Times magazine evokes a sense of tragedy even though he appears relaxed with one foot propped up on the bars as he picks intently at a piece of fruit. He had only been in these cramped, dank quarters for about a year, but the real tragedy was that he would live there for another twelve years before our paths would cross again and I would be privileged to do something about his condition. Herman was a Chimpanzee who lived across town from Busch Gardens in what Leposky described as the “dilapidated, prison-like cages” at Tampa’s public zoo at Lowry Park. A decade later, I was destined to return to Tampa to direct the renaissance of the Lowry Park Zoo and see Herman walk on grass for the first time.  

Looking back from the perspective of today, it is difficult to imagine a society that would accept the keeping of animals in such conditions. But that was a different era – an era that stretched back hundreds of years to the very first menageries in the Western world.

An Uneasy Attitude Toward Zoos

On June 25th, 1972, 43 years ago this month, a feature article entitled New Zoos for Everyone, Bar None appeared in the St. Petersburg Times Sunday magazine The Floridian. The article explored the place of zoos in society and the essence of our fascination with animals.
“There is an uneasiness in the human attitude toward zoos,” George Leposky wrote, “an uneasiness that can be seen in the constant debate whether they are educational and useful or cruel and an outrage. This debate has been around as long as zoos have, which is thousands of years.”

Chimpanzee at Lowry Park Zoo – 1972

I saved the article after all these years because it featured me, as a 22-year-old student at the University of South Florida who was studying Zoology, working at Busch Gardens, and preparing for a career in zoo management. I also saved it because the subtitle of the article proclaimed that “most zoos are one part of a system that may be headed for extinction”. An investigator from the Humane Society of the United States was crisscrossing the country calling for the closure of many zoos. What had I gotten myself into?

Doug Porter at Busch Gardens – 1972

Now, 43 years later, I am a 65 year old zoo manager who can look back at a fascinating career. After Busch Gardens, I worked at or managed the Toronto Zoo, the Louisville Zoo, the Lowry Park Zoo, the Great Plains Zoo and Museum, The Toledo Zoo, and Chehaw Park. I have viewed wildlife in such exotic locales as Kenya, Botswana, the Galapagos, the Amazon and the Arctic. I have handled every type of animal from elephants to polar bears to rattlesnakes.
Zoos are far from perfect, but no industry engages more people on behalf of wild animals and wild places, and no one is sounding the alarm by standing up for endangered species like the zoos and aquariums of the world.
So, how do we answer for zoos in today’s rapidly-changing world? The answer, I believe, lies in how zoos and aquariums choose to change and adapt. As Leposky accurately foretold over forty years ago, “We want zoos to become scientific and educational institutions which help us place our civilized existence in perspective by offering insights into where our species has been and, hopefully, where it should be going.”
Zoos not only did not become extinct, they have become formidable advocates for wildlife and wild places. AZA accredited zoos contribute $160 million each year to wildlife conservation, supporting nearly three thousand projects in one hundred thirty countries.
As I face-off against my own retirement, I thought this might be a good time for a series of blogs, using my career as a lens to view the status of zoos. How far have they come and where might they be headed?

Elephants on My Mind

Elephants are on my mind again these days because they are back in the news. Animal advocates in Seattle are still in an uproar over the transfer of their two elephants to the Oklahoma City Zoo. The vehicles hauling the animals encountered some bad weather along the way and had to detour to the San Diego zoo, which did nothing but add fuel to the firestorm of protest. To make matters worse, people who thought these elephants should go to a sanctuary received support from Jane Goodall, only to have her change her mind a week later after a more thorough review of the facts.

Jane Goodall and the Seattle Elephants

In an April 29^th letter to the Mayor, the City Council, and the Zoo, she wrote:

I have reviewed the options for Chai and Bamboo to be relocated into a social herd of Indian Elephants. While PAWS maintains a wonderful sanctuary, the Oklahoma City Zoo would provide the optimal home for Chai and Bamboo. At Oklahoma City Zoo, Chai and Bamboo would join a family of elephants, including two young adults, a four year old and an infant. Elephants are highly intelligent animals with deep emotional connections and complex social structures. Chai and Bamboo will be able to live more fully within this more complete family herd.

Jane. Goodall’s support of zoos is, I believe, encouraging because zoos are good for elephants. They are spending massive amounts of money both on conservation in the wild and on providing optimum habitats in captivity. Moreover, some zoos (like Seattle, Toronto, and Detroit) are recognizing that they do not have the climate, the necessary space, or the financial resources to adequately maintain elephants and they have made the courageous and compassionate decisions to close their exhibits. Other zoos have pooled their resources to create the 225 acre National Elephant Center to hold animals in the optimum climate of South Florida.

Elephants Facing Extinction

This is a critical time in elephant conservation. A widely reported May 1^st scientific study reports that many of the world’s largest wild herbivores (which includes elephants) are generally facing dramatic population declines and range contractions, such that ~60% are threatened with extinction. Ever-larger swaths of the world will soon lack many of the vital ecological services these animals provide, resulting in enormous ecological and social costs.

As if to punctuate this discouraging report, there is this May 4^th story out of Botswana. In January of 2014, Botswana imposed an almost complete ban on hunting wildlife, including elephants. While this might sound like good news for the elephants, is has created problems for the villagers. Farmers now regularly lose their crops to marauding elephants whose populations are booming and they have lost the supplemental income generated by hunting rights.  The hunting ban does not appear to be working. An overpopulation of elephants can be a disaster for the local environment and for the people who share their habitat. Ultimately, it is the elephants who will be the losers.

As discouraging as the news from the wild may be, I am optimistic about their prospects in North America. Both zoos and circuses are changing the way they manage these intelligent beings as they continue to raise both awareness and money. With this kind of commitment, their extinction in the wild may be inevitable but their worldwide extermination is not.

Preserve our natural treasures

GUEST COLUMN in the Albany Herald (22 April 2015)

   I almost missed Earth Day. It was the Google Doodle with the revolving earth that reminded me on Wednesday morning. In my defense, we are working on Saturday’s Earth Day event at Chehaw called Party for the Planet, so that is what I had on my mind. But still, April 22nd is the day we have set aside to inspire awareness of and appreciation for earth’s environment. This year marked its 45th anniversary. How could I have forgotten?

   Earth Day is a worldwide event, with festivals and tree plantings in Africa, trash and litter pickup at the Great Wall of China, and a climate summit in Europe. The issues we face are enormous and controversial. Global climate change is threatening to melt the polar ice caps, raise sea levels, and create dangerously unpredictable weather patterns. Our hunger for oil finds us drilling wells in sensitive ecosystems like the arctic tundra and virgin rainforests and it encourages oil companies to inject liquid at high pressure into the ground to extract every last ounce of oil and gas (fracking). In the American West, California is in the midst of one of its most severe droughts on record. The largest water reservoir in the United States, Nevada’s Lake Mead, is at its lowest level since the lake was filled by the Hoover Dam in the 1930s. We are also seeing record snowfalls in the north and massive hurricanes along the Eastern seaboard. The challenges are almost overwhelming and seem to defy solution.

   But, if you want to see the glass half full, there is much to be thankful for here in South Georgia, as we work to preserve our own natural treasures. Paddling a canoe from the Flint River dam through downtown Albany is an eye-opening experience. The beauty and serenity of that stretch of river is breathtaking. If you ever have the opportunity to take a mule-drawn wagon ride through the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway or any of the large quail plantations around our part of Georgia, you can’t help but be in awe of the abundant natural resources at our disposal.

   So, what can we do to preserve what we have? We could begin by supporting the work of the Flint Riverkeeper as this organization works to restore and preserve the habitat, water quality, and flow of the Flint River. The river is our most vital natural resource and it should not be taken for granted. Another group that deserves more support is Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful (KADB) as they work to change people’s attitudes and behavior toward littering, beautification, and the proper management of waste through recycling.

   And what of the next generation? What are we teaching them? The Flint RiverQuarium has a number of summer camps and other programs that are designed to promote conservation using their aquatic exhibits and other educational, entertaining experiences that interpret the unique ecosystems of the Flint River watershed. Chehaw Park also follows its mission of inspiring people to connect with nature and encouraging conservation action through positive recreational and educational experiences. Chehaw has well attended summer camps, is developing a new overnight camp experience for this summer, and continues to engage young people through its unique Junior Zookeeper Program.

   The importance of Earth Day to the next generation can hardly be overstated. The sentiment was best expressed in 1968 by a Senegalese forestry engineer named Baba Dioum in his presentation for the General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), when he made the oft-quoted statement: “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

The Genius of Animals

This poster came across my Facebook feed last week and it got me wondering. I can think of many humans with great minds, like Leonardo daVinci, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Miley Cyrus (OK – just kidding), but isn't the same probably true of animals? I know it sure seems true with my pets. With my first two dogs, Simba was the smart, intuitive one and Jana was what we politely called “sweet”. Our second pair of dogs turned out the same. The folks at the kennel where we boarded Bexley called her a clown in a dog suit. She was big, exuberant, and very smart. Chelsea, on the other hand, is not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. Our black cat, Binny, was probably smarter than anyone in the house, including my wife and me, but she never let on.

Objectifying Animals

Author Barry Lopez wrote in his award winning 1986 book, Arctic Dreams, that “we have irrevocably separated ourselves from the world animals occupy. We have turned all animals and elements of the natural world into objects”. “[And] because we have objectified animals”, he goes on to say, “we are able to treat them impersonally.” If we could somehow appreciate animals as individuals, perhaps they would become more personal (and precious) to us.

I would love to find a way to test the intelligence of all of the African elephants on earth. Wouldn't it make sense that some would be smarter than others? I’ll bet some elephants are probably geniuses. Some are wise, some are “sweet”. Some are kind and some are mean. I know that sounds anthropomorphic, but I suspect there is more to this than we can possibly know.

Nut Cracking Crows and Tool Using Apes

Look at what we already know about crows. They are renowned for their ability to recognize individual human faces. The folks at the How Stuff Works website claim that crows living in urban areas are known to gather nuts from trees and then place them in the street for passing cars to crack open the shells. Then, after waiting patiently for the light to change, they return to the street to retrieve their nutty snack. Who was the first genius crow to figure that out – without being run over by a car?

How Stuff Works also notes that lab rats find shortcuts, loopholes and escape routes in the laboratory experiments designed by the top scientific minds of our time, and cetaceans have a sophisticated "language" that humans are only just beginning to unravel. Dolphins use tools in their natural environment and can learn an impressive array of behavioral commands by human trainers. And I would love to meet the first chimpanzee who figured out that stripping the leaves off a twig and sticking that twig into a termite mound would result in a termite Popsicle treat?

Poopy Head

Early in my career as a zookeeper, one of my duties was to help walk five African elephants to their night-house and chain them up for the night – a practice that is, thankfully, no longer followed. Every evening, we lined them up and, as one trainer stood in front holding them steady, the other trainer went down the backside of the line placing a long chain around the back ankles. This gave them freedom to walk around in a certain radius, to eat and lie down, but not to get into too much mischief overnight.

On one of my first evenings chaining the elephants on my own, as I bent over to do the old matriarch Elke, something thudded onto the top of my head. It was heavy, soft, and a little larger than a softball. As it rolled off my head and onto the floor I could see it was a turd. When I looked up, my partner was laughing.

“If you stand off to the side,” he said helpfully, “that won’t happen.”

Right.

At that time, I imagined a big, dumb animal inadvertently pooping, and me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as I look back and think about the above-captioned poster, I’m not so sure. What if Elke did that on purpose? She was the oldest and most experienced. She had seen lots of handlers come and go. She knew I was the new guy and didn't know to stand to the side. I wonder if she chuckled when she nailed me and her infrasonic communication rumbles caused a ripple of silent laughter from the other elephants, as well. I didn't think it was funny at the time but it sure would make me happy to think these elephants were having some fun at my expense.

There is something primal and powerful within us that wants to separate us from the animals, to make us special among all creation. But what if some of these incredible things animals do are not the result of millions of years of evolution and some deep-seated instinct? What if they are the result of an unusually smart animal – an Einstein of the animal kingdom – figuring something out and passing it along? Which brings me to this thought that is sometimes attributed to Einstein himself:

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

CBS spends 60 Minutes with Damian Aspinall

 I first learned about the CBS 60 Minutes piece set to air March 15^th, 2015 through the zoo directors’ list serve. The hard-hitting, TV news show was working on a story about zoos and they were working with Damian Aspinall – a well-known opponent of zoos. Great, that’s all we need. It was just 2 weeks earlier that a 60 Minutes piece on Lumber Liquidators claimed high levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde in some of their flooring products, sending their stock plummeting the very next day. And who can forget the effect of the documentary Blackfish on the fortunes of SeaWorld? In a society that is fed a steady diet of “reality TV”, I expected Monday morning pundits to be singing the praises of Aspinall’s heroic efforts to save animals and a damning indictment of the cruelty of zoos. But, as one of my favorite Saturday morning sports commentators likes to say – not so fast my friends.

DamianAspinall was born to a life of wealth and privilege on the 500 acre Wildlife Park that is part of his country estate in the English countryside. The operation was started in the 1970’s by his wealthy father, who was passionate about  keeping his animals in enclosures as close to their natural habitat as possible and keeping them in social groups that would replicate their behavior in the wild. The 54 year old Damian clearly has an affinity for these animals, as the videos of him playing tug-of-war with a tiger, patting down a black rhino, and wrestling with gorillas clearly show. He says the animals are part of his family – his equal.

The 60 Minutes story begins by asking whether endangered animals born and bred in captivity should ever be released into the wild. A conservation group called the Aspinall Foundation, the narrator says, is trying to find out. CBS Journalist, Lesley Stahl, began her interview with Aspinall by noting that zoos see their mission as not just displaying animals but also saving endangered species.

Zoo Gorillas Return to the Wild

“Zoos,” he responds, “are jails that lock up animals for life. If I could extinguish all zoos over the next 30 years, including my own, I would.”

Stahl makes the case for zoo animals as ambassadors and zoo education might encourage preservation, but he is shaking his head before she is finished speaking.

“Please show me the statistical evidence that zoos educate and that the education that they claim they are doing has helped animals in the wild. There is no evidence because it is a lie,” he claims.

This exchange sets the tone of this story. Zoos, Aspinall claims, are bad and he is determined to return his animals to the wild – beginning with his gorillas.

As they talk about the plan to send his gorillas to Africa, Stahl notes they are fragile and questions whether it is too dangerous for zoo raised animals to go to the wild. But he brushes the question aside, suggesting that man underestimates animals.

Aspinall crates-up 10 gorillas, a male, 5 females and 4 young, and ships them to Gabon in West Africa, where he has purchased 1 million acres and turned it into a park. The gorillas are released onto an island to acclimate. One year later, as the 60 Minutes cameras roll, they tentatively step across a bridge from their island to the mainland in what appears to be a triumphant release from captivity to a life of freedom. But the joy is short-lived. One month after the gorillas crossed the bridge to freedom, the team found all five females and one of the babies dead. The others probably suffered the same fate, but crawled off into the jungle to die. Aspinall had earlier acknowledged the possibility of failure but brushed it aside. Those who wanted to prove him wrong can take no joy in being right.

Can zoos be animal sanctuaries?

In one of my very first blogs, in August 2013, I recalled a 1989 trip to Africa where my wife and I observed “biodiversity in its natural state”. As we sat at a waterhole in central Africa, we watched a female sitatunga antelope cautiously step out into the open and make her way to the water for a drink. It was not a remarkable scene until someone pointed out two female lions lurking at the forest edge nearby. We watched as they split up and were mesmerized as one lion chased the antelope into the waiting jaws of her companion in a remarkable bit of teamwork. The antelope never had a chance. We didn’t know whether to feel sorry for the sitatunga as she was suffocated by the lion’s strangle hold on her throat or cheer for the lions and their remarkable bit of hunting. You could argue that these lions are better off in the wild because they get to hunt antelope for dinner, but I am not so sure about the sitatunga.  

In December of 2014, I wrote a two-part blog entitled Amnesty for Animals that looked at the concept of the repatriation of captive animals back to the wild. If we are going to repatriate wild animals and move them out of zoos, aquariums, and marine parks, I wondered, to what wild will they be humanely returned? Accredited zoo and aquarium facilities are getting better and more humane while enlightened and loving caretakers learn new techniques to ensure that animal welfare is a top priority. A large, diverse zoo habitat might be a perfectly good, permanent home for some wild animals.

It is a sad fact that zoos have allowed the perception (not entirely undeserved, unfortunately) that some captive situations can be traumatic. Zoos also stand accused of wantonly breeding animals to produce the cute babies which make them money at the gate. When the babies grow up they become surplus to the zoo’s needs. Sanctuaries have been rescuing these “unwanted” and “surplus” zoo animals for decades. If zoos are going to survive, I believe they need to step up their game and become the sanctuaries to which people refer.

Contrary to Aspinall's claim, people are positively influenced by the collective conservation message of zoos and the animals that live in them. The University of Warwick, in England has just provided evidence evidence that zoos and aquariums do more than just entertain us. The largest study of its kind suggests they also raise awareness of biodiversity and how to protect animals and their habitats. Would these zoo animals better-off in the wild? They might be if humans had not evolved to dominate every corner of the planet – but here we are. And how do you define better-off, anyway? Aspinall’s gorillas are certainly not better off.