Zoo Officials Must Choose Which Species Live And Die

Zoo officials across the country are facing tough choices on which endangered species they can save and which they cannot, as funding does not allow them to save every animal, because of a skyrocketing list of endangered species.

The New York times reports that one such species is the lion-tailed macaque monkey, of which only 4,000 remain in the wild. While many zoos in America have begun to phase out the old world monkeys, the St. Louis zoo holds on, having been home to these creatures since 1957.

Unfortunately, Leslie Kaufman of The New York Times writes:

“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.”

What does this mean for the lion-tail monkeys, like Ozzie at the St. Louis Zoo? It means that:

“American zoos are on the verge of giving up on trying to save them.”

With their numbers diminishing rapidly in India, their native home, zoos are unable to spend the time required to breed the aging zoo population. Gawker reports that:

“The more animals near extinction, the more zoos are being asked to take in. And sometimes the resources just aren’t there, especially when the species in question span mammals, fish, birds, and even insects.”

Because of this, zoos are forced to decide which species they can save and which they must let go.

The New York Times reports that Dr. Steven L. Monfort, the director of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, which is part of the National Zoo in Washington, stated:

“We as a society have to decide if it is going to be ethically and morally appropriate to simply display animals for entertainment purposes. In my opinion, that model is broken. There needs to be an explicit role for zoos to champion species.”

He went on to say that:

“I am comfortable with raising the standards for zoos so that eventually it will be harder and harder to be accredited unless you are doing that. If you can’t keep up, then you probably need to be dropped off the bottom.”

Dr. Monfort is suggesting that zoos should raise more money for conserving animals in the wild, and making that effort as important as erecting fancy accommodations for their current collections. He also believes, according to The Philadelphia Post-Gazette, that zoos should build facilities that are not necessarily open to the public, which are big enough to handle whole herds of animals, that way more natural reproductive behavior can occur.

Dr. Monfort adds that less emphasis should be placed on animals that, while popular attractions, are perfectly fine in the wild (including African elephants and California sea lions). Instead, he states, they should be replaced with animals that are in desperate need of rescuing.

Check out footage of the St. Louis Zoo’s lion-tailed macaques here: