Yesterday Ndume was sent on his way. Today he arrived. Soon, the plan is to integrate him, slowly and gradually, with some females to create a new troop of his own.
Ownership of animals isn't something many zoo staff think of as much as they used to. In the old days, it was always at the top of your mind, since the sale of surplus animals was a major source of income, income which was needed, in part, to buy animals from other zoos. With the establishment of Species Survival Plans and collaborative breeding programs, many animal exchanges between AZA institutions are donations these days. Zoos have also been keen to downplay any impression that they monetize animals.
Still, in the eyes of the law, animals are property (albeit property with more rights than other kinds), and property is owned. If you don't have any legal title to an animal, it's harder to advocate for it and ensure it has legal protection. At most zoos where I worked, ownership was usually transferred whenever an animal went from one institution to another. In other cases, ownership is officially retained by a government - either a domestic one (i.e., the US Fish and Wildlife Service has ownership of all the bald eagles in zoos and aquariums) or a foreign one (Panama for golden frogs, Brazil for golden lion tamarins, etc).
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