EDUCATION | ANIMAL ADVOCACY | ANIMAL CONSERVATION
Does Conservation Trump Animal Welfare in Zoos?
And what does an “ethical” zoo look like?
Some of my best childhood experiences involved long, happy days spent observing, feeding and touching animals at zoos and wildlife parks. My love for animals has carried through to my adult life, and my academic education in the field of animal studies. My PhD on animal-centred tourism in Asia fulfilled my dual passion for animals and travel, taking me around India, Thailand and Indonesia, where I encountered a variety of species and studied tourist-animal interactions at zoos, wildlife parks, sanctuaries, and animal welfare and conservation projects.
I have long been interested in exploring grey areas in our treatment of animals used for entertainment. This interest developed in part due to a question that plagued me on zoo visits as an adult, where my happy childhood memories conflicted with my concerns for animals kept in captivity. That question was: Can our desire to interact with captive animals ever work to their benefit?
Raising conservation awareness
One of my case studies concerned zoos and wildlife parks in Bali. I wanted to know whether visitors to these sites (largely Western tourists) were actively helping animals, primarily by becoming interested in conservation as a result of their experiences. The zoos and wildlife parks I studied had a range of conditions for animals (poor to good), and some had active conservation programs in place that were funded by entry fees and donations. Some sites also aimed to educate visitors about conservation issues, including the endangered status of certain species and threats to their habitats.
There is no doubt that zoos can play an important role in conservation. More ethical zoos engage in scientific research, species reintroduction and other conservation-related activities, ideally also educating zoo visitors about animals, especially those that are vulnerable or endangered. This sets them apart from less ethical, usually privately owned operations, where captive animals may be used for entertainment alone (e.g. Joe Exotic’s Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park).
Research that has explored whether people gain conservation awareness from visiting zoos and wildlife parks demonstrates contradictory findings. For example, a book-length study by Chilla Bulbeck found that visitors’ encounters with animals at these sites elicited physical and emotional responses that brought about a deeper understanding of the non-human world, leading to “a new kind of environmental conservation” (p. xix).
Bulbeck’s findings align with more recent research by Andrea Godinez and Eduardo Fernandez, which also showed that zoo visitors gain conservation awareness, especially those who visit repeatedly.
Conversely, research by Liam Smith, Betty Weiler and Sam Ham suggests that there is “comparatively little evidence for a sustained shift in attitudes or behaviour” once visitors have left zoos (p. 59). This parallels findings by ethicist David Fennell, whose research showed that “a move towards conservation mindedness does not appear to be a sustained outcome of the zoo experience” (p. 81).
Zoos and wildlife parks in Bali
My personal experiences at Bali’s zoos and wildlife parks reflected this grey area. On the one hand, I loved observing, feeding and touching the animals and reading informational materials about different species and conservation efforts. I learned about species I knew nothing about, such as the endangered Bali Starling and the Sunda Tiger. On the other hand, I often felt uncomfortable about some of the cages and enclosures in which animals were kept, and concerned for those used in shows and other displays.
I wanted to see whether this tension was true for other visitors to these sites, so I developed a qualitative online survey. I surveyed 55 people who had visited the same zoos and wildlife parks in Bali to understand whether their conservation awareness had increased. Part of the survey was framed around “enjoyment” as a means to investigate their experiences with animals used for entertainment and pleasure.
The survey showed me that all the visitors had enjoyed various aspects of their experiences, with tactile encounters (touch and feeding) being the most profound. The visitors used terms like “connection”, “bond” and “empathy” to describe their interactions with animals. As one respondent explained:
“[The encounter] increases your empathy with that animal somehow and raises your level of awareness as to their treatment.”
Another explained how her own conservation awareness had been piqued:
“[It] gives you a different way of thinking about animals, such as the way they live … and conditions in the wild for a specific species of animal.”
Of the 55 respondents, 18 agreed that they had become more interested in conservation as a result of their experiences, showing evidence of the sites’ educational programs being somewhat successful. The remaining 37 said that they had not become more interested in conservation after visiting the sites. This suggested that the enjoyable aspects of their experiences had not necessarily had positive outcomes in terms of conservation education.
Conservation vs. welfare awareness
The survey responses also revealed one interesting feature. Despite an increase in conservation awareness not being true for all respondents, the majority had become more interested in or aware of animal welfare issues due to their experiences. These findings arose from a question about what they enjoyed least about their experiences, and spoke to the sub-par conditions at some of the sites.
Respondents described animals being “chained up and caged”; cages being “dirty and wet”; conditions being “very hot”; and animals needing “to be looked after a lot more”. One respondent was concerned about “seeing the animals with very limited room to move, especially the tigers and lions, and also birds tied up all day to a perch”.
Another described action she took after becoming concerned about welfare:
“I had to ask the staff to take a number of birds (housed in small bamboo cages) out of the sun. They had been placed hanging along the roof line and some were so distressed in the heat and direct sunlight that they were trying to cool off by immersing themselves in their small water containers. It was horrible to see and to think that it had been occurring each day.”
A number of people were worried about the animals being manipulated by humans. One commented that “orang-utans … deserve to live in the wild not captivity”; another that she didn’t “like to see [birds] in cages, they should be free to fly”. Two respondents were concerned that the animals were drugged “for tourists to have a photo with” and so that they “could be handled”. One respondent believed that the sites represented human “control of the habitats of other life forms”, and yet another that “animals are still exploited for [the] satisfaction of humans”.
David Fennell argues that zoos can violate the “free-living status” of animals (p. 8), while cultural theorist John Berger argues that animals may be “rendered absolutely marginal” in these situations (p. 24). Berger’s following description would appear to reflect the worse possible conditions for zoo animals:
“visibility, space, air, have been reduced to tokens [and] what was central to [animals’] interest has been replaced by a passive waiting for a series of arbitrary outside interventions” (p. 25).
According to David Fennell, in sub-par zoo conditions, animals may show:
“a passiveness and dependence based on small cages, isolation, and programmed feeding times that render the animal as more like a distorted cultural version or image of what the animal would be like in its natural form” (p. 78).
It was clear to me that the tension I and my survey respondents had experienced was a direct result of conditions that rendered animals overly passive and dependent.
My research suggested that conservation awareness and awareness of animal welfare issues were not necessarily identical, aligning with existing studies. As David Fraser argues, this is because conservation and welfare concerns have “developed along two fairly distinct lines” (p. 121). As such, as Paul Paquet and Chris Darimont argue, “the conservation of species and populations often trumps all other values, including the welfare of individuals” (p. 184).
Arguably, animals on display for visitors stand in for the species being conserved. In less ethical situations, their welfare comes second to their usefulness in promoting conservation, mainly by acting as draw cards for visitors who pay to see them.
Finding more ethical zoos
Zoos aren’t going away any time soon, and most animals currently living in zoos cannot be released into the wild. People will always want to encounter and interact with animals, and these experiences are important because they connect us with the non-human world. As wildlife biologist Dr. Stephanie Schuttler argues, such experiences are essential for humankind to overcome the “extinction of experience”: “the large-scale loss of people’s experiences with nature”. But we must always keep in mind that our desire to encounter animals in captivity may come at a cost.
Supporting more ethical zoos where both conservation and welfare are paramount is one way to encounter captive animals while minimising our impact on them. Dr. Schuttler provides excellent guidance for identifying more ethical zoos, which have the best welfare conditions and most effective, transparent conservation activities. As well as accreditation (by, for example, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in the USA and the Zoo and Aquarium Association of Australasia), Dr. Schuttler notes that more ethical zoos have:
- More realistic enclosures mimicking natural habitat
- Large enclosures, especially for larger species
- Enrichment: Food sources or objects to encourage the natural behaviors of animals
- Less stereotypic behavior (repeated movements, head bobbing in elephants, pacing)
- No or extremely regulated exotic animal touching
- Barriers between the animals and the public
- Purposeful and regulated breeding of specific species
- Babies are an infrequent occasion and are announced to the public
- Baby animals stay with their mothers in exhibits
- The animals do not perform tricks
- Placards and other educational information about the animals in the wild
- Research takes place at the zoo and/or on animals in the wild
- Government or non-profit ownership with a board of directors
- Scientists (people with masters or Ph.D.s) and veterinarians are part of the permanent staff
- Many keepers have bachelor’s degrees.
In articles to come I will discuss a number of zoos and wildlife parks that fulfill these criteria and therefore provide better welfare conditions for animals while also supporting conservation. I’ll also write about ethical animal sanctuaries as another alternative, which similarly allow animals to experience a better life within captivity.
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Dr. Nikki Savvides is an Australian author whose writing focuses on animal advocacy and environmentalism. She’s passionate about improving the welfare and conservation of animals, specifically captive elephants in Thailand. With a PhD focused on the ethical potential of volunteer tourism, Nikki has over a decade of research experience connected to these issues.
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For more information on Nikki, her research, and elephant education resources, you are welcome to visit her website.
