Resumen de El futuro de los zoológicos del siglo XXI. Una propuesta para tiempos de extinción
José Miguel Esteban, Armando Martell
In this work we defend that zoos must disappear from cities and be transformed into another type of biological space, geographically close to distinct regional biomes (or to biomes with an ecological assembly akin to the regional ones), populated exclusively with animals from local species endangered by anthropogenic causes. Doing this will improve life conditions for the inhabitants and will comply with the functions of research, education and conservation which the zoos claim to have. In those spaces, captivity breeding may be controlled in order to conserve threatened species, as well as to safeguard the captive animals’ welfare by means of behavioral enrichment. The evolutionarily-adequate parameters to determine the optimal welfare state of a particular animal should be taken from the native habitat’s ecological and social conditions. Conversely, the ecological and social conditions in captivity are different from these native features, and however scrupulous the captivity design maybe, the behavior allowed by the animal genotype can be disrupted, as several cases are show along this paper. No human action in favor of captivity animal’s welfare may reach beyond distress relief, and that is at least the price to pay for trying to save some endangered species. To reduce such cost, there are environmental enrichment projects such as the ones mentioned at the last part of this work.
