Think Your Half-Term Visit to the Zoo will Support Threatened Species? Think Again…..Do Zoos put the Con in Conservation?

Shocking new report published today by Born Free highlights that the majority of species found in the UK’s Consortium of Charitable Zoos (CCZ) are not classified as threatened species, and it appears that these zoos have made little effort to adjust this imbalance since it was first identified by Born Free 15 years ago.

Will Travers OBE, stated: “The truth about zoos is hard to expose, as layers of self-justification wrap themselves around these institutions. Just how many species have been bred successfully in zoos and returned to the wild? And while an elephant enclosure containing a tiny number of often un-related individuals costs many millions, field conservationists are crying out for even a fraction of those resources to protect wild elephants and their habitats. Bluntly, the multi-billion-pound zoo world promises much but delivers very, very little.”

The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) has stated that without government action “organisations [BIAZA members] could close for good” due to the pandemic, and headlines have warned that “species could face extinction”. But would they? Born Free’s new report (Conservation or Collection? Evaluating the conservation status of species housed and bred in charitable UK zoos) clearly shows that such claims are, at best, grossly exaggerated.

The minority of species found in CCZ zoos are threatened with extinction, and the majority are on the lowest rung of the IUCN list – the category of Least Concern – including the two European brown bears tragically shot at Whipsnade Zoo on Friday the 21st May 2021. Astoundingly, CCZ zoos housed more domesticated animals (360) than animals belonging to species classed as Extinct in the Wild (64) for whom, you might have thought, conservation is the highest priority.

Born Free is calling on the government to review the now 40-year-old Zoo Licensing Act (1981) to ensure more stringent and meaningful conservation criteria are required of zoos, criteria that are transparent, measurable and in the public domain, and against which zoos can be held to account, both for their implementation and for meeting stated targets. This would require specific follow-up actions by zoos to demonstrate real conservation benefits which should meet at least three of the five conservation measures set out in the Zoo Licensing Act (1981) in order to meet their conservation obligations. Currently, zoos only need to fulfil one of the five.