To Save Some Species, Zoos Must Let Others Die

[Tim Gier]

There is an interesting article in the New York Times about the challenges facing zoos as they try to deal with their role as conservators of endangered and threatened species.  Here's how the article frames the issue:

As the number of species at risk of extinction soars, zoos are increasingly being called upon to rescue and sustain animals, and not just for marquee breeds like pandas and rhinos but also for all manner of mammals, frogs, birds and insects whose populations are suddenly crashing.

To conserve animals effectively, however, zoo officials have concluded that they must winnow species in their care and devote more resources to a chosen few. The result is that zookeepers, usually animal lovers to the core, are increasingly being pressed into making cold calculations about which animals are the most crucial to save. Some days, the burden feels less like Noah building an ark and more like Schindler making a list.

Please take the time to read the whole thing here and let us know in the comments what you think about the issues the article raises. 

[George Miler]

With some habitats gone, re-introduction is invalid. Yet who are we to judge? Granted, ecosphere damage is mostly the fault of our species. There’s a moral imperative here, even if it is only a duty we impose upon ourselves as a species in whom morality is an emergent property of evolution. At the same time conservationists have been accused of being anti-evolutionary in wanting to maintain a sort of status quo. What if we end up preventing extinctions that might have occurred anyway?  It’s wrong to impose a stasis on the world. That said, the extinctions caused by human immorality remain a crime we ought to atone for in some fashion, simply as a categorical imperative. I would suggest saving the DNA in some form until a new regime manifests itself (if any, I’m not a nanoscopic optimist). The West is in decay mode and I lack historical perspective to predict whether it will reorganize itself to embark upon a new advancement phase or degenerate into one of those “corpse-in-armor” empires I keep prating about. The chances for reform then will be nil, and all the capital will be absorbed by the military, initially to protect  profits but later to turn the tables on their sponsors as Hitler and Mussolini did, and as the mercenaries did on the Roman nobles/senators whose privileges and inefficient economic system that empire emerged to protect. I reject the lower than the angels higher the animals characterization. I’m not looking for an anthropocentric explanation of human nature.

 

Other issues: zoos may need the revenues from animal exploitation to do their jobs. Ultimately they need a new charter: conservation as such. Institutions can evolve as well as devolve, redefine themselves as I keep wishing our economic institutions would do.

 

You have posed a real dilemma here in its original literal sense.

[Tim Gier]

This is the part that makes the issue such a tough one, I think: "the extinctions caused by human immorality remain a crime we ought to atone for in some fashion".

[Lukas Gloor]

Why are people trying to conserve species? A "species" can't feel pain or pleasure. It's the individual *members* of a species that matter. Humans shouldn't put their aesthetic preferences above the vital interests of sentient beings. To an animal, it doesn't matter whether it belongs to a species that is going extinct or not, the animal just wants to live with as little suffering as possible. If we give more consideration to some animal just because it belongs to an endangered species, that seems blatantly speciesist.

I don't see a good justification for holding animals in cages that aren't appropriately big and exciting. If the zoos provide for them as well as possible, with huge areas for the animals, then I'm not opposed to it. In that case, it would be like a cow living on a sanctuary. But what about carnivores? How are they going to be fed? Unless you give them cultured meat, it seems unjustifiable to hold them in zoos. 

I don't think there's anything wrong with abolishing zoos altogether, even if that means some species will go extinct. I don't think non-existence is a problem for animals, if it were different, we'd be ethically obliged to bring as many sentient beings into the world as possible, and that strikes me as rather odd. Those animals that exist now should have a life as nice as possible, that's what matters most.

Edit: Just want to add that for the above reasons, and for the reason that they're mostly not vegans, I disagree with the journalist when he / she says that zookeepers are "usually animal lovers to the core". Or well, they might love animals, but then they're confused and inconsistent about certain aspects.

[Tim Gier]

I agree that it individuals are what matter, but it seems to me that, if human beings have caused the near extinction of a certain species then we can't excuse ourselves from doing what we can to rectify that situation just by claiming that it isn't species that matter.  I don't think zoos as a form of spectator entertainment are either necessary or good, but if the model of sanctuary can replace the current one, then at least in some instances that model of zoo wouldn't necessarily be bad.

[Lukas Gloor]

But is it bad when humans cause extinctions? If yes, shouldn't we then be trying to conserve species no matter whether we're responsible for some of the extinctions or not? As an analogy, if it is bad that Western democracies are to a large part responsible for people starving in third world countries, then that's bad because starving is something bad, not because "human caused starving" is something bad. Suppose poverty happened to just be there without us being responsible, wouldn't it still be good to get rid of it?

I think the past is irrelevant for the ethical issue here. Either extinctions are bad, or they aren't. If people think they are bad, I'd like to know why. Sure, one could mention biodiversity and the fact that ecosystems collapsing might have catastrophic consequences for the planet and for humans. But let's leave that aside, especially since zoos don't help fixing ecosystems (as far as I know). If someone answers that a species going extinct is bad because it leads to less diversity, would that mean that we should try to artificially create more species, because diversity is somehow intrinsically good? I don't think people would be willing to follow that argument to all its conclusions. What's left seems to only be an appeal to "not messing with nature", that nature is somehow good and has a plan. But that's the (informal) naturalistic fallacy. Nature is the product of evolution, a blind, indifferent process that's all about gene survival, not about the well-being of individuals. So altogether, I don't think the idea that species conservation is ethically valuable holds up to close scrutiny.

[George Miler]

This is what I urge in the near term: the model of zoo as sanctuary. Or perhaps a complete transformation of zoos into sanctuaries. Take what already exists and remodel it. Zoos themselves have been trending in this direction. The problem is resource allocation (actually resource availability), and in the present draconian right-wing Donald Trump mindset I see a long uphill battle, a larger context. I don't like this triage mentality, but I understand why it's there.

[Susan Skeels Sams]

I hate zoos for many reasons. They are a business and I question how much some of the "keepers" love the animals. There's video of Louie, the young elephant born at The Toledo Zoo being beaten with a bullhook. Elephants belong in sanctuaries, especially ones housed in colder climates, however the ex-director of The Detroit Zoo is the only person I know of who had the care and concern to send all their elephants away, and did so under the threat of losing their accredidation. Zoos pull apart families and bonded animals. They ship older, less desirable animals off to canned hunting compounds and roadside zoos. I'm guessing Dr. Monfort is the exception rather than the rule. Sure I'm biased and don't know a lot of the facts but the ones I do know breaks my heart. 

 

[Monique]

I agree that nonexistence is not inherently a problem for any animal, human or otherwise, but there are plenty of problems with allowing species to become extinct as a result of human actions.  A species going extinct means a lot of individuals suffering loss of habitat, hunger, conflict, injury, stress, high infant mortality, and possibly increased predation.   And when enough key species go extinct and an ecosystem crashes then the individuals in the remaining species are going to suffer even more.

I don’t think zoos are the answer.   It is habitats that we should be trying to save.  The rate of human caused extinction is too overwhelming for our zoos to alleviate.    How many species can really be saved in the world’s zoos?  A few hundred?  A thousand?  It’s not going to make a meaningful difference.    If we lose their habitats then we’d just be saving certain species that would probably need our perpetual care, keeping them alive as exotic pets. 

Is there a difference between human caused extinctions and natural ones?   Yes I think so, a significant moral difference anyway.   It’s similar to the moral difference between a person being killed by a reckless driver and a person dying from a bacterial infection.  In both cases death is bad, but only in the first case is it an avoidable wrong done by a person who could have chosen otherwise.