The thing I think that we'll all miss are scenes like the one above. For all their faults and all the arguments against them, zoological parks still perform some critical conservation and educational services. Pulling kids out of their increasingly isolated-from-Nature pixel saturated worlds into the Real is an unalloyed Good Thing. Cultivating a sense of wonder, familiarity with and empathy for Nature in the young is really the only thing that will save it. A generation isolated from Nature and indifferent to it won't bother.
There are essential wildlife conservation programs active in the world's zoos and aquaria. The "mission" has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Now, there's captive breeding programs, gene studies and zygote banking, DNA profiles, all with an increasing urgency as the sixth great extinction gathers momentum outside. Most of the good ones are reservoir arks of animals, some extinct in the wild or about to be as their natural habitats are destroyed by war, climate change and human expansion. The hope is that, someday, we'll be able to stabilize and restore the wild lands and reintroduce (and/or recreate) them into a heather world.
Slim hope, I know, and one I will never see, but where there's life there's hope, eh?
<img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/TJckbZ9PTjkek/giphy.gif" width="400" height="400">
This is why we can't have nice things:
<img src="http://i.giftrunk.com/g3v6xf.gif"/>
The time is right, as John says, and the facility they are planning seems nice:
<img src="http://www.trbimg.com/img-576030e2/turbine/bs-bz-dolphin-folo-20160614-001/1200/1200×675"/>
The thing I think that we'll all miss are scenes like the one above. For all their faults and all the arguments against them, zoological parks still perform some critical conservation and educational services. Pulling kids out of their increasingly isolated-from-Nature pixel saturated worlds into the Real is an unalloyed Good Thing. Cultivating a sense of wonder, familiarity with and empathy for Nature in the young is really the only thing that will save it. A generation isolated from Nature and indifferent to it won't bother.
There are essential wildlife conservation programs active in the world's zoos and aquaria. The "mission" has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Now, there's captive breeding programs, gene studies and zygote banking, DNA profiles, all with an increasing urgency as the sixth great extinction gathers momentum outside. Most of the good ones are reservoir arks of animals, some extinct in the wild or about to be as their natural habitats are destroyed by war, climate change and human expansion. The hope is that, someday, we'll be able to stabilize and restore the wild lands and reintroduce (and/or recreate) them into a heather world.
Slim hope, I know, and one I will never see, but where there's life there's hope, eh?
<img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/H6CW8SL6vgVb2/giphy.gif">
Some places you can get arrested for freeing your Willie.
Woah! *checks zipper*
Thanks.
It's wise, sometimes, to confine them to a conservation area.
True, and keeping them in the dark is for the best. No good can come of it If they get to see what the Willies on the TV news are up to every night.
I saw a pod of Atlantic White-Sides right in the mid bay, just recently. Following the Shad migration up. I think. It was a huge thrill.
<img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/5a/a7/42/5aa742b386b9d8177605e6e895804510.jpg"/>