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On this page you can browse all my blogs. The archive sec­tion pro­vides access to all the blogs, while the fea­tured blog and lat­est blog sec­tion pro­vide a dif­fer­ent and lim­ited order­ing of my blogs.

y per­sonal attempt to try and con­vince every­body of the beauty and the impor­tance of nature as (evo­lu­tion­ary) phe­nom­e­non, espe­cially its fauna. Infor­ma­tion is given, in text and image, on my ‘beasts’. Cats, espe­cially big ones, will be star­ring next to other preda­tors. And if pos­si­ble my all time favourite the cow will make its appear­ance. But above all I would like to stress and show, as a one-​man-​pressure-​group, the impor­tance of the diver­sity of life on our earth. As the uncom­pli­cated beauty of ani­mals pro­vides a lot of plea­sure to those who appre­ci­ate it. More species mean more plea­sure. To pre­vent species from going extinct at the rate we see today is there­fore para­mount. Not only for esthetic rea­sons, but also for the preser­va­tion of life on earth. Because to me, loss of bio­di­ver­sity is insep­a­ra­ble con­nected to a dete­ri­o­rat­ing envi­ron­ment on earth. Mother Earth whom is less and less capa­ble of sus­tain­ing life. Zoos will become more impor­tant for con­ser­va­tion of fauna diver­sity, which I would like to show also. As a mat­ter of fact, I started the endeav­our with launch­ing a web­site (moos​mood​.com) focussing on this plethora of issues around 2008. It turned out that pick­ing up where I left years ago, vis­it­ing zoos and see what kind of progress was being made in keep­ing ani­mals in cap­tiv­ity, fit­ted nicely into my new chal­lenge. So, more and more time is con­sumed with vis­it­ing zoos and review­ing their efforts to save endan­gered species. Gen­e­sis and extinc­tion are an inex­tri­ca­ble cou­ple that seems off bal­ance. Let us try and restore this balance!

Roar For­ward: The mis­sion to dou­ble wild tiger num­bers (Tx2)

(John Sei­den­sticker)

ature’s diver­sity should be admired and enjoyed instead of destroyed. Destruc­tion of your own habi­tat is like com­mit­ting sui­cide. There is ample evi­dence that sub­stan­tial bio­log­i­cal diver­sity keeps an ecosys­tem healthy, or even stronger: is nec­es­sary to let the ecosys­tems pro­vide their ser­vices. Now and again a new species is dis­cov­ered (which is not the same as evolved), but the species extinc­tion rate has never been so high. This leads to an enor­mous bio­di­ver­sity loss of which the con­se­quences will be dev­as­tat­ing when irre­versible. An increase of new species and loss of other species is insep­a­rabe from the evo­lu­tion­ary cycle, but when the ratio is off bal­ance changes will take place. Of course the global loss of bio­di­ver­sity is impor­tant, but the local diver­sity of flora and fauna is what really counts. On a local scale flora and fauna together form an ecosys­tem. So, dis­tur­bances on a local scale will affect the ecosys­tem and its ser­vices, like (clean) water, food (nutri­ent bal­ance), med­i­cine and dis­eases. This will be notice­able not only for researchers but also for the gen­eral public.

The dye­ing poison-​arrow frog (for­merly known as Den­dro­bates azureus but now con­sid­ered a color vari­ety of D. tinc­to­rius), found in low­land forests of South Amer­ica in the Guyanas and adja­cent Brazil, is threat­ened with extinc­tion. It con­tains sev­eral tox­ins called alka­loids in its skin that have been use­ful tools for under­stand­ing how local anes­thet­ics, and some drugs like phen­cy­cli­dine (PCP or “angel dust”), work. Its vivid colour­ing is a warn­ing that it is dan­ger­ous to eat.

So, what dri­ves species to extinc­tion? There seems to be con­sen­sus regard­ing cli­mate change, inter­na­tional trade, long dis­tance trans­port of prod­ucts and ani­mals, human travel, land use and urban­i­sa­tion being the main dri­ving forces for the cur­rent observed bio­di­ver­sity loss. All in all this makes man the cause of the high rate of species extinc­tion. This is not being done on pur­pose, but out of igno­rance. At least that is what I hope, and which makes the cur­rent bio­di­ver­sity loss col­lat­eral dam­age. Unfore­seen, but nev­er­the­less sub­stan­tial and pos­si­bly devastating.

Peo­ple should be made aware of this black future that will become real­ity if we do not stop this uncon­trolled neg­a­tive influ­ence on nature and its bio­log­i­cal diver­sity. There­fore I plead for moral and finan­cial sup­port for those peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions, includ­ing non-​governmental, that are try­ing to raise this aware­ness and do some­thing to reduce the loss of bio­log­i­cal diver­sity. For instance organ­i­sa­tions involved in nature and wildlife con­ser­va­tion, cli­mate change reduc­tion, and cam­paigns against envi­ron­men­tal pollution.

State­ments like the fol­low­ing, dis­played in the Amer­i­can Museum of Nat­ural His­tory in New York, could raise this aware­ness:

Oth­er­wise the mes­sage of Eric Chi­vian in this video should do the trick:

Dr. Eric Chi­vian, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Health and the Global Envi­ron­ment, Har­vard Med­ical School, explains how polar bears offer us the oppor­tu­nity to unlock some med­ical mys­ter­ies but we must do so before polar bears are gone for­ever or take steps quickly to ensure their sur­vival. Study­ing polar bears in the wild has the poten­tial to unlock med­ical secrets related to osteo­poro­sis, kid­ney dis­ease and renal fail­ure, and obesity.

(Source: CEN­TER for HEALTH and the GLOBAL ENVI­RON­MENT, Har­vard Med­ical School)

Or per­haps this might help:

s long as can be remem­bered (exotic) ani­mals have been col­lected to sat­isfy man’s curios­ity for beau­ti­ful, dan­ger­ous, extra­or­di­nary, and human-​like crea­tures of the ani­mal king­dom. At first it were the world’s rulers who, using their power and author­ity, col­lected ani­mals and estab­lished menageries, either by hav­ing the ani­mals sent from occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries or by receiv­ing ani­mals as gifts in return for favours. Later, the rich and wealthy could afford to estab­lish menageries of exotic ani­mals, col­lected by eccen­tric explor­ers, for their own plea­sure. Occa­sion­ally the naïve cit­i­zens were allowed to view these col­lec­tions. For­tu­nately, this grad­u­ally changed when trav­el­ling menageries came into exis­tence and zoos were founded which allowed the com­mon peo­ple to visit their grounds. At first one day or morn­ing a week, Sun­days for instance, but soon this was increased until the ani­mals were on dis­play for every­one, year-​round.

Next, came the under­stand­ing that ani­mal wel­fare was impaired when ani­mals were housed alone in small cages, and con­tin­u­a­tion of wild catch of endan­gered species would be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive in the end. This caused a shift in zoo pol­icy world­wide, know­ing that breed­ing suc­cess of endan­gered species in zoos relied on good ani­mal hus­bandry sys­tems and that diver­sity of ani­mals in the wild was at stake. Main­tain­ing the diver­sity of the ani­mal king­dom became the main dri­ver for many zoos and a require­ment to be mem­ber of a con­ti­nen­tal or global zoo organ­i­sa­tion (WAZA). There­fore, their mis­sion is focused on sus­tain­abil­ity in gen­eral, lead­ing to objec­tives con­cern­ing wel­fare and care of ani­mals, bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion, envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion and global sustainability.

This can be recog­nised in changes made in the man­age­ment of mod­ern zoos. The ani­mals are offered an envi­ron­ment which is more or less sim­i­lar to their nat­ural envi­ron­ment, par­tic­u­larly to allow devel­op­ment and expres­sion of nat­ural behav­iour. The result lead to enclo­sures that pro­vide ani­mals the oppor­tu­nity to iso­late them­selves or hide, which is nat­ural behav­iour too and makes them less vis­i­ble some­times. This requires under­stand­ing of the pub­lic that pri­mar­ily come to see the ani­mals, and there­fore needs expla­na­tion, guid­ance or a dif­fer­ent approach. After all, vis­i­tors bring in the ever so needed money, thus a decreas­ing num­ber of vis­i­tors is unde­sir­able. Care­ful bal­anc­ing between these two “ben­e­fits” is there­fore essential.

In the field of bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion, the zoo puts on a fight against the extinc­tion of species based on two pil­lars. Con­ser­va­tion of species on a quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive level, and edu­ca­tion of the pub­lic about the deple­tion of mother earth and its con­se­quences. The lat­ter is often enthu­si­as­ti­cally addressed with var­i­ous edu­ca­tional pro­grams, and infor­ma­tion points in the zoos with vol­un­teers as staff. A few decades ago peo­ple realised that con­tri­bu­tion of zoos to the con­ser­va­tion of species would only be effec­tive if inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion between zoos could be estab­lished. The ‘law of large[r] num­bers’ plays a sig­nif­i­cant role on gene, race and species level. Inbreed­ing, and thus the appear­ance of hered­i­tary prob­lems, should be avoided as much as pos­si­ble. There­fore, tar­geted breed­ing pro­grams are devel­oped which are cen­trally man­aged and directed, and make use of the gene pool of as many zoos as pos­si­ble. In Europe this has led to the Euro­pean Endan­gered Species Pro­grammes (EEP) and the Euro­pean Stud Books (ESB). The man­age­ment thereof is appointed, per species, to a spe­cialised zoo and a ded­i­cated employee who bears the respon­si­bil­ity for this task. He or she plays an impor­tant role in the main­te­nance of the col­lec­tive species pop­u­la­tion in zoos, and pos­si­bly in the wild. For sev­eral species pro­grams are devel­oped to try and return “arti­fi­cially” (ex situ) bred ani­mals to their nat­ural habi­tat in the wild.

Finally, it is worth men­tion­ing that many rep­utable zoos fund research and imple­ment it on loca­tion for bet­ter under­stand­ing of the causes and con­se­quences of the degra­da­tion of nat­ural habi­tats on wildlife pop­u­la­tions through­out the world, with the ulti­mate goal to pre­serve the species.

The World of Zoos
My per­sonal visu­alised view about the impor­tance of Zoos and the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their exis­tence, pro­vided they are mem­ber of the World Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos and Aquar­i­ums (WAZA) or one of the regional organ­i­sa­tions, such as EAZA and AZA, can be seen here: