Reptile & Amphibian Forums

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003841459_satlets18.html

Letters to the Editor

August 18, 2007

Feeding time in the wild

After an extremely silly utterance ("Unfortunately, all people won't be happy until our carnivores are eating salad", Point Defiance Zoo interim veterinarian Kathleen Larson goes on about the "problem" of not being able to supply horse meat to the zoo's carnivores: "We don't have a lot of choices." ["Zoos in a pickle over horse meat," page one, Aug. 14.]
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=horsemeat14m&date=20070814

Here's a choice you might consider, Dr. Larson: Don't lock up carnivores so that they have to be fed.

Carnivores, like all wild animals, need to hunt and kill their own food, in their natural habitat. They cannot thrive or even endure in the close quarters of zoo captivity.

It is wrong to capture wild creatures and lock them up for our own "entertainment."

It's also wrong to attempt to breed these imprisoned animals in order to produce weird and unnatural, pale imitations of majestic beasts.

If we have destroyed the natural habitat of free-roaming animals, it's our problem and, certainly, our loss.

— Nancy Pennington, Seattle

The other side of the coin is that humans may not end up agreeing to save a species in the wild until after too much damage to habitat has occured. I know it's a rare and expensive circumstance but at that point habitat reconstruction and reintroductions of captive animals is possible only if we have them and know how to breed them. IMO that's a better option than just saying oh well let's hope we do better with the next endangered species.