Reintroducing Captive Animals Essay

For many patrons, going to the zoo is simply a fun and a somewhat educational experience. However, many zoo goers are unaware of the ethical considerations of keeping animals in captivity solely for entertainment purposes. As the world population of many species has begun to decline, many zoos have attempted to capture animals for breeding purposes and re-release them into the wild. The success of these “breed and release” programs are being researched for their ability to help to establish a functioning population in the wild. Though these programs aim to help animal populations, many animals are often exposed to poor conditions that drastically reduce their well-being and life span while in captivity. Many scholars have begun to question whether the possibility of restoring a functioning population is worth the duress …show more content…
In recent research involving the relative success of reintroducing the puaiohi, a small songbird, back into its native environment, relative success was determined by the whether the animal was able to breed (Lieberman et al.). In this study, thirty four puaiohi were released into the wild, and overall breeding success was approximately forty percent (Lieberman et al.). Although the relative success rate for this “breed and release program” was only forty percent, this signified room for improvement when attempting to reintroduce this and other species into the wild. Many of the puaiohi nests in this study were targeted by predators, whom were likely rats, which emphasized “the importance of maintaining and restoring [a] safe habitat for recovery [of a species]” (Lieberman et al.). Though research suggests that “breed and release programs” are effective in increasing animal populations less than half of the time, many argue that without some form of human intervention, some species may disappear