ABSTRACT
The extent to which zoos can help by captive breeding to save endangered species is of course limited, and most obviously so by the minute selection of species from the animal kingdom as a whole that they are able to keep. But why should that invalidate the contribution that they can make to the immensely important cause of animal conservation, especially as it is likely to be possible for them, if necessary, to keep a very large proportion of the larger – and threatened – vertebrates, mammals especially? We could, true, make the real situation clearer by calling zoos ‘selected charismatic mega-vertebrate conservation centres’, to emphasise their limited role, and perhaps then, just as bird gardens, presumably, need not feel morally inadequate for not even trying to breed endangered mammals, SCMCCs (or zoos) would not be condemned, as Kieran Mulvaney seeks to condemn them, for having saved at the most a dozen species from extinction; ‘a mere 0.00012% of all the life forms on earth’, perhaps ‘less species within the last 150 years than have become extinct over the last couple of days’. What Mulvanely leaves out is that we don’t value all species equally, although he clearly differentiates between them as much as the rest of us. The evidence is there in his photograph, in the presence of his English setter. Dogs are special – to humans. We would regret their extinction more than we would regret the extinction of any of the vast number of invertebrate species, mostly beetles, that allow Mulvaney to shrink, as he does, the zoo achievement. I accept that every species – protozoan, alga, bacterium – is of immense scientific interest and sometimes (eg many protozoans) of exquisite beauty too. Every one is the product of thousands of millions of years of evolution. Still more do I accept that to save the rainforest from the appalling way in which it is being destroyed for the shortest of shortterm advantages is of the utmost importance, and much more important even than saving any charismatic mega-vertebrate. But what I do not accept is that the need to save natural habitats such as rainforests, and the millions of species contained in them, can in any way mean that it is not right to try to save such exceptional species – in terms of their appeal to humans – as the Arabian oryx or the Californian condor. To save either of these is comparable, as an achievement, to saving the Taj Mahal.
