Is there an ethically good zoo? These zoos say sure

Stand-offs earlier than faculty aren’t unknown in my family. But the reason for the disagreement with my 10-year-old caught me without warning: a category outing to the zoo had been deliberate — and he or she didn’t wish to go. Setting apart the truth that, in my day, I’d have toured a waste-management facility if it meant dodging double maths, I quizzed her about the reason for her reluctance. “They’re cruel,” she mentioned. For all of the advances that zoos as an entire — and a quantity to a putting diploma — have undergone in current many years, unfavorable connotations nonetheless linger.

It’s maybe not stunning. The earliest zoos, which grew to become widespread throughout Europe within the nineteenth century, had been grim affairs, with creatures held in iron cages or barred pits and sometimes goaded into aggression by employees and guests. Their successors developed with altering public sensibilities however, all too typically, outright cruelty merely gave approach to a extra insidious selection: cramped enclosures, poor food plan and a brazen disregard for psychological welfare. And, whereas some zoos could sadly nonetheless be like this, slowly this has begun to alter.

Jersey Zoo is a completely totally different animal. Modelled across the philosophy of its pioneering founder, Gerald Durrell, it opened in 1959 with a give attention to the strategic conservation of endangered species moderately than merely the show of animals.

Set in 32 acres of parkland, the zoo has spacious, naturalistic enclosures. Its conservation work spans all the things from captive breeding of at-risk species equivalent to lesser evening geckos and pink pigeons for reintroduction to the wild, to coaching conservationists by its academies. It additionally helps to revive fragile ecosystems as far afield because the Galápagos Islands and the Brazilian rainforest.

However an establishment chooses to badge itself, its moral credentials relaxation on three demonstrable priorities, in response to Jersey Zoo director of operations Mark Habben: “Having a clear conservation focus, a clear research focus and clearly defined welfare goals and assessments for the animals.”

All are embraced by Chester Zoo, one of many UK’s largest. It had almost 2.14 million guests in 2025 — the best in its 94-year historical past. It was vindication, the zoo believes, of its conservation and welfare-centric strategy. Its 22-acre Heart of Africa expertise showcases the work of its initiatives throughout central and East Africa, defending species within the wild equivalent to the large pangolin — the world’s most trafficked mammal — and jap bongo, a forest-dwelling antelope. And its conservation breeding programme has yielded chicks of the Socorro dove, a chicken declared extinct within the wild within the Seventies, in addition to a snow leopard cub.

Such so-called ‘insurance populations’, with zoos around the globe collaborating to make sure the widest attainable gene swimming pools, have change into an more and more important position in our age of rampant poaching, looking and habitat loss. All three elements pushed the Arabian oryx, as soon as plentiful throughout the Arabian peninsula, to an extinction-in-the-wild classification within the early Seventies. Yet in the present day — following a profitable captive breeding programme encompassing zoos equivalent to Phoenix, San Diego and London — there are 1000’s within the wild or in managed populations, and the species has been downgraded to ‘vulnerable’.

The Arabian oryx is seen as an exemplar of zoo-assisted restoration and reintroduction, alongside the California condor. Just 22 of those giants, whose wingspans can attain three metres, had been left within the wild in 1982, with lead poisoning from hunters’ bullets and collisions with energy cables posing a important risk. A coordinated breeding programme involving San Diego and Los Angeles zoos has boosted that determine to a number of hundred in the present day, unfold throughout areas equivalent to Zion and Grand Canyon nationwide parks.

Both case research are illustrative of an uncomfortable fact: the place as soon as zoo enclosures protected people from animals, they have to generally do the reverse. “A lot of people still think zoos aren’t great because animals aren’t in the wild,” says animal ethicist Samantha Ward of Nottingham Trent University. “But the truth is, the wild is no longer this place where animals roam free and it’s all happy and wonderful.”

Professor Ward works with zoos to enhance animal welfare circumstances; primarily making certain that creatures have the house, atmosphere and psychological stimuli to not simply survive however thrive. She’s additionally concerned within the shaping of laws. Much of Europe, underneath the EU Zoos Directive, and the UK underneath its equally complete Zoo Licensing Act, are topic to stringent regulation governing all the things from housing and veterinary care to the show of details about species and the threats they face within the wild.

But requirements of nationwide laws differ wildly. It’s why such retailer is ready by accreditation our bodies like WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) and its American, European and British equivalents: AZA, EAZA and BIAZA. Yes, it’s a little bit of an alphabet soup, confesses Ward. But “if you’re going off the beaten track and particularly to parts of Asia where animal welfare is generally known to be pretty poor, looking for such accreditation is the best thing you can do”.

With an estimated 700 million annual zoo guests worldwide, the worth of those establishments in fostering curiosity and driving schooling is appreciable. A 2024 research by Sheffield University, collating 50 items of analysis in almost 40 zoos and aquariums internationally, discovered that departing guests felt extra constructive about conservation. They had been higher knowledgeable and extra more likely to take motion to guard species and their habitats — equivalent to supporting wildlife charities or purchasing for extra sustainable merchandise.

Shaldon Wildlife Trust in Devon payments itself because the ‘small zoo making a big difference’. Its animals are primarily endangered species held as a part of managed breeding programmes, equivalent to South American primate the yellow-breasted capuchin, which has misplaced over 80% of its inhabitants up to now 50 years.

Director Zak Showell says he understands the reticence which may be felt concerning visiting zoos. But he provides that, partly because of the work of organisations equivalent to EAZA and AZA, requirements in the present day are “much, much higher than the vast majority of the public are aware of”. And with zoos collectively serving as one of many largest funders of species conservation on the earth, it’s important potential guests are persuaded of their deserves.

“We have that very difficult balancing act of being successful businesses to ensure we generate enough revenue to deliver on our conservation, education and research aims,” says Showell. He provides that doubters ought to “come, ask us questions and scrutinise the work we’re doing”.

My daughter ended up doing simply that — and returned from her faculty journey newly enthused. That’s the facility of what Professor Ward calls ‘progressive zoos’. “These are the ones using the knowledge they’ve gained to constantly develop their captive spaces, contributing towards conservation programmes, and helping with species preservation in the wild,” the professor explains. “If they’re getting all that right, then they’re good, progressive zoos and I think they’re definitely worth defending.”