Zoos, Food and Oceans
Over the last number of years, through the influence of films like Blackfishand animal abuses in circuses, society has been questioning the place for zoos and the use of animals for entertainment. In many cases, zoos have been demonized but they do serve a purpose. Because human activity is having such a negative impact on the natural habit for many species, zoos play an important part in conservation and education. However, it seems that zoos seem to be a convenient solution. Today, there are active debates over the Winnipeg Zoo’s Journey to Churchill exhibit and bear cubs being re-housed there.
When it comes to the ethics of zoos, some zoos handle their ethical responsibilities better than others. Facilities like SeaWorld have shown they have not handled the ethical questions well and are in a phase of significant downsizing. However, zoos like the San Diego Zoo is considered the gold standard for modern zoos. The difficulty with keeping animals in captivity and their enclosure, especially animals that naturally roam. These types of animals are not conducive to zoos as roaming over great distances, is not possible.
I can appreciate the education and conservation aspects of zoos, but I personally do not enjoy visiting them. I find it heartbreaking to see animals caged and not able to live a more natural life.
What we eat is deeply personal thing and one that has significant impact on the natural world around us. For my household, I am pretty happy with our food system. We source our food as locally as possible and know what went into the production of the food. It tastes great because it is free of chemicals and artificial hormones. However, that being said, there are a couple of things I do not like about my household food system. It can be time consuming as it isn’t as easy as running down to my local grocery story to pick things up. The cost is also something I wish would be less. I do not mind paying more of locally sources, sustainable goods where the people growing them make a decent living. The cost is worth the benefits, but I do wish is was less expensive.
Oceans are one of the greatest resources on the planet and we treat them so poorly. We assume we can take anything we need from them without any consequence and dump our waste in them afterwards. My greatest concern when it comes to our oceans is plastic pollution. The volume of plastic in our water system is staggering and it is so large in scale that we don’t have a technological solution to deal with it. What makes things even more complicated is that the plastic breaks down into microplastics and scientists have documented that these plastic fragments have entered the food web at all levels.
My action plan is to hopefully encourage changes, especially in the amount of single use plastic our society consumes. As a household, we try to by zero single use plastic and we are pretty successful on this front. When single use plastic in unavoidable, I ensure it is sent for recycling. Single use plastic is one of the easiest environmental changes we can make as this plastic is for convenience, not necessity. We survived just fine before it was in wide use and we can again, just by modifying our behaviour.