The role of zoos as conservation centres has continued to develop over the years and today, many species have been brought back from the brink …
The role of zoos as conservation centres has continued to develop over the years and today, many species have been brought back from the brink thanks to zoo initiatives.
This is really the pits; a Trustee of a zoo (the Madras Crocodile Bank) spouting off about the benefits of zoos! Talk about vested interests! But I have a I’ve been a zoo junkie from way, way back.
When I was in my teens, one of Gerald Durrell’s mammal keepers — Quentin Bloxam — stayed with us for a time in (then) Bombay. His mission was to collect a pair of lions from Junagadh, Gujarat, and take them back to Jersey Zoo. The Gir lion population had dwindled to less than 300, and the Durrell team was creating conservation repositories of endangered species from around the world.
I was an avid Durrell reader, and relentlessly persecuted Quentin with questions about “GD” — and even managed to appropriate a shirt of his, which he’d lent Quentin for the trip since it was light cotton and “good for the tropics”. It was at least 10 times my size, but I insisted on wearing it, much to my mother’s dismay. Incidentally, while on the trivia trail, the lion and lioness were named after my father and me. Over the next few months, we got several updates from Quentin about how Zafar was a tractable and responsible lion, but [Zai] was a handful.
After the Junagadh pick-up and before they were flown to the UK, the lions were housed in the Victoria Garden Zoo (now Veer Mata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan and Zoo) while Quentin stayed with us to wait out their quarantine period. As the most dispensable member of the family, I was nominated to help him navigate the bus and train system and get him to Byculla and back. This was an added opportunity for questions and it was fascinating to hear about Jersey Zoo’s conservation projects from around the world. In later years, I was to read about the many successes of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, including the restoration of the island of Floreana in the Galapagos National Park, and clearing it of introduced predators which threaten its wildlife and vegetation.
Since those times, the role of zoos as conservation centres has continued to develop and today, many species have been brought back from the brink thanks to zoo initiatives. The Johannesburg Zoo is engaged in a breeding and rewilding program for the Cape vulture, an endemic and endangered species.
