"I sent the club a wire stating, "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."
- Groucho Marx
It’s hard to say for sure how many zoos and aquariums there are in the United States, partially because of the difficulty in defining exactly what a zoo or aquarium is and is not. They come in all varieties – big and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit. Some exhibit only natives, others display animals from around the world. Some feature all sorts of animals, but some only display birds, or fish, or insects.
It’s a relatively small number of these institutions – somewhere
between 10 and 20 percent of them, depending on how you want to count them –
that are members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums – the AZA. The AZA is a non-governmental organization
that is devoted to representing, recognizing, and supporting what it perceives to
be the best of the best of America’s zoos and aquariums*.
AZA members are selected following an intense accreditation
process, conducted every five years (more often if the standards of a facility
are called into question). The
institution is visited by a team of inspectors from other zoos and aquariums,
who look the place over top and bottom, inside and out. They see everything that the public would see
– how the animals look, the state of the enclosures, the public areas of the
campus. They also go behind the scenes
and delve deep into recordkeeping, protocols, governance, educational programming,
veterinary reports, and finances. Staff
members are interviewed, either individually or in group settings. Every aspect of the zoo – from how many
animal escape drills it’s conducted recently to how much enrichment is done to
how much the staff is paid – is evaluated carefully. A new
requirement (still more of a suggestion at this point) pushes zoos and
aquariums to give a certain amount of money to field conservation programs
annually.
Later that year, at the annual AZA meeting, a representative
from the zoo or aquarium appears before the AZA accreditation committee to hear
their report. A facility may either pass
accreditation, fail it, or be tabled, meaning that it has a lot of issues and
is given a year to get it together before being re-inspected.
AZA standards can be a hassle, and they are always
increasing, or new requirements are added.
What makes it worth the headache?
By belonging to AZA, a zoo or aquarium becomes part of a network that
can achieve more than it could by working alone. Some of the best examples of this are the
breeding programs, or Species Survival Plans, conducted by AZA. Multiple facilities working together can have
better luck managing animal populations by pooling their animals and their
spaces. AZA zoos seldom buy or sell animals
with each other – instead, they move them about as needed, either for genetics,
exhibits, or social groupings. AZA also
provides a lobbying voice for zoos and aquariums, as well as training and
professional development. Recently, AZA
facilities have also been more aggressive and more proactive in conservation
messaging, working together on themed campaigns to raise awareness about key
issues threatening wildlife around the world.
Always a good sign to look for on your next zoo or aquarium visit
There are reasons why a zoo or aquarium might opt not to
join AZA. Most obvious of these is that
they wouldn’t meet the standards, and reaching those standards would be too
expensive or too difficult, especially for a small, privately owned
facility. Others might choose not to
because they dislike the added level of restriction and oversight. If a facility plans of breeding and selling
animals, for instance, or wants to have visitor-animal interactions that AZA
feels is unsafe, they may decide they are better off on their own. Some private zoo owners look with scorn on all the regulations that AZA has; I'm remembering one individual in particular, interviewed as part of Morgan Spurlock's Inside Man episode on zoos, sneeringly describing AZA as a "country club for zoos." Again, the vast majority of zoos in the US are
not accredited by AZA. Some are members
of a different accrediting organization (the confusingly named ZAA). Most are on their own.
It would be unfair of me to flat out say that I only visit
AZA-accredited facilities, though it is near the truth. Certainly almost all of the zoos and aquariums I have done reviews of so far are AZA members. It would be fair to say that I will go
unhesitatingly to any AZA member; non-AZA members I ponder and vet to make sure
they are worth supporting. Some most definitely
are; Sylvan Heights Bird Park, for instance, is not accredited (by choice of
the management), but it has the best waterfowl enclosures and breeding programs
that I’ve seen anywhere, in or out of AZA.
Others are the sorts of institutions that the slur “roadside zoo” was
made for.
I would love to eventually see more and more non-AZA member
institutions join the AZA, and slowly but surely it seems to be happening. In many cases, I believe that the animals in
those collections benefit more from the heightened standards and professional
peer review. Also, I believe AZA would
benefit from having them – the more members, the more animal professionals working
together, the greater a force for good zoos and aquariums can be.
*AZA is primarily an accrediting organization for the USA, though it does have a handful of members in other countries. Other geographic regions have their own accrediting bodies - BIAZA (United Kingdom and Ireland), ARAZPA (Australasia), CAZA (Canada), etc.
*AZA is primarily an accrediting organization for the USA, though it does have a handful of members in other countries. Other geographic regions have their own accrediting bodies - BIAZA (United Kingdom and Ireland), ARAZPA (Australasia), CAZA (Canada), etc.
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