Zoos In The 21st Century

Modern zoos and aquaria are playing an increasingly active and important role in protecting and managing global biodiversity. Many zoos include wildlife conservation in their mission and have started changing the focus of their institutions in order to increase even further the benefits of their activities for in situ wildlife conservation. With these developments, the following searching questions are now being asked: What is the true role of zoos in conservation? How can they contribute more significantly to global conservation efforts? What are the unique attributes of zoos that can be applied in the conservation landscape? And should zoos be doing more? In parallel with this voluntary movement, legal requirements for zoos to support conservation in the wild are also becoming more stringent. This 2007 book defines a conservation vision for zoos and aquaria that will be of interest to those working in zoos, alongside practitioners and researchers in conservation.

Zoos, aquaria, and wildlife parks are vital centers of animal conservation and management. For nearly fifteen years, these institutions have relied on Wild Mammals in Captivity as the essential reference for their work. Now the book reemerges in a completely updated second edition. Wild Mammals in Captivity presents the most current thinking and practice in the care and management of wild mammals in zoos and other institutions. In one comprehensive volume, the editors have gathered the most current information from studies of animal behavior; advances in captive breeding; research in physiology, genetics, and nutrition; and new thinking in animal management and welfare. In this edition, more than three-quarters of the text is new, and information from more than seventy-five contributors is thoroughly updated. The standard text for all courses in zoo biology, Wild Mammals in Captivity will, in its new incarnation, continue to be used by zoo managers, animal caretakers, researchers, and anyone with an interest in how to manage animals in captive conditions.

In 1979, Edward P. Alexander's Museums in Motion was hailed as a much-needed addition to the museum literature. In combining the history of museums since the eighteenth century with a detailed examination of the function of museums and museum workers in modern society, it served as an essential resource for those seeking to enter to the museum profession and for established professionals looking for an expanded understanding of their own discipline. Now, Mary Alexander has produced a newly revised edition of the classic text, bringing it the twenty-first century with coverage of emerging trends, resources, and challenges. New material also includes a discussion of the children's museum as a distinct type of institution and an exploration of the role computers play in both outreach and traditional in-person visits.

We are on the precipice of momentous legal changes for animals that may soon give some of them rights of personhood and citizenship. Companion animals in particular are gaining rights to public representation in government, access to housing, inheritance, and increased protection through the criminal justice system. Nonhuman primates used as research subjects are also gaining limited rights of personhood in some countries. This book examines how zoo animals could benefit from that revolution as well. Reviewing zoo law and politics in the United States, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, scholars and zoo directors grapple with how the current law in those regions of the world impacts zoo animals and how it could be changed to serve them better. They discuss the ways in which zoo animals could benefit from some re-worked companion animal law in the United States; the challenges of reintroductions and their legal barriers; how we can extend ideas of human research subject rights to zoo animal research; the stark problems of too few animal welfare laws in South East Asia; the need for a central governing body focused solely on exotic captive animals in New Zealand; and the need for stricter laws preventing the exotic pet problem that is increasingly affecting both zoos and sanctuaries. The book starts a dialogue that moves the scholarship about zoos beyond a general discussion of ethics to a concrete dialogue and set of suggestions about how to extend legal rights to this group of animals.

This book provides reflection on the increasingly blurry boundaries that characterize the human-animal relationship. In the Anthropocene humans and animals have come closer together and this asks for rethinking old divisions. Firstly, new scientific insights and technological advances lead to a blurring of the boundaries between animals and humans. Secondly, our increasing influence on nature leads to a rethinking of the old distinction between individual animal ethics and collectivist environmental ethics. Thirdly, ongoing urbanization and destruction of animal habitats leads to a blurring between the categories of wild and domesticated animals. Finally, globalization and global climate change have led to the fragmentation of natural habitats, blurring the old distinction between in situ and ex situ conservation. In this book, researchers at the cutting edge of their fields systematically examine the broad field of human-animal relations, dealing with wild, liminal, and domestic animals, with conservation, and zoos, and with technologies such as biomimicry. This book is timely in that it explores the new directions in which our thinking about the human-animal relationship are developing. While the target audience primarily consists of animal studies scholars, coming from a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, sociology, psychology, ethology, literature, and film studies, many of the topics that are discussed have relevance beyond a purely theoretical one; as such the book also aims to inspire for example biologists, conservationists, and zoo keepers to reflect on their relationship with animals.

Metamorphoses of the Zoo marshals a unique compendium of critical interventions that envision novel modes of authentic encounter that cultivate humanity's biophilic tendencies without abusing or degrading other animals. These take the form of radical restructurings of what were formerly zoos or map out entirely new, post-zoo sites or experiences. The result is a volume that contributes to moral progress on the inter-species front and eco-psychological health for a humankind whose habitats are now mostly citified or urbanizing.

This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on what zoos do, few people consider how they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland. Zooland begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and education. Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register, track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals, deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire. Zooland takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the human and the nonhuman.

Zoo Animals: Behaviour, Management, and Welfare is the ideal resource for anyone needing a thorough grounding in this subject, whether as a student or as a zoo professional.