It seems that the entire zookeeping community has spent the last week online, doing little except post about the appearance of Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle's recent appearance at the AZA annual conference. There has been a lot of hand-wringing and a lot of accusations fired back and forth about who is or isn't in the right, and what this potential alliance means for the future of our profession. Some of the comments, to be blunt, have gotten a little nasty and personal, especially those directed towards animal care professionals who have any involvement with HSUS or *gulp* PETA.
Something that we're all going to have to confront one of these days is how do we interact with the people and organizations that are opposed to us? Do we ignore them - but that just leaves them an open field to work against us. Do we fight them tooth and nail - because sometimes that makes us look overly defensive, or look like we have something to hide. Do we try to work with them and find common ground - or is that just appeasement and inviting them to cause damage from within?
I will say, sometimes I feel like the posts online are one-part cute animal video, one-part zookeeping questions, and one-part anger over anti-zoo and aquarium sentiments we find online. Sometimes the same cheesy anti-zoo meme gets posted over and over and over again on the same day. I worry that we may be getting to the point where we are becoming more defined by what and who we oppose than we are about what we do and what we believe.
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