Leave Me A Loan

Later this year, the giant pandas of the National Zoo and Zoo Atlanta will be returning to China.  Earlier this year, there was outrage over the handling of a kiwi at Zoo Miami, with some online voices demanding the bird be sent to New Zealand.  Every day in between, there are countless movements and shufflings of animals of all sorts - animals being moved as part of breeding programs, social pairings, rescue efforts, and various other reasons.

In all of these situations, there is one important aspect that many members of the public don't understand - who owns the animal involved?

Zoos don't like to talk about it too much - anti-zoo folks often frame zoos in terms of slavery, which makes talk of ownership can sound distasteful, animals being reduced to property.  The thing is, legally speaking... that's what they are.  Just as we own our dogs and cats, as much as we talk about "adoption" and "fur babies," every zoo or aquarium animal in the country legally belongs to someone.  It may be a private individual, in the case of a privately-owned zoo, or a nonprofit, or a government agency.  All bald eagles in zoos in the United States, for example, are owned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  It may even be a foreign government - all golden lion tamarins are owned by the Brazilian government.

  

There is plenty of recognition of the fact that animals aren't *just* property - a dog or cat or elephant has more legal rights and protections than, say, a car or an end table.  But the legal owner is the person who has the authority to make decisions about that animal and is responsible for it.  That gets lost on some folks.

The giant pandas are going back to China because... they're China's pandas.  China owns them.  They have just been on loan here, and are slated to return following the completion of that loan.  Conversely, despite all of the demands for the Zoo Miami kiwi to go back to New Zealand, it was NOT New Zealand's kiwi - it belongs, legally, to Zoo Miami.  Zoo Miami opted to change some husbandry protocols in response to the outcry over the bird, but that was their decision.  If they wanted to keep doing photo ops with it, that was their - legal - right.

Whenever an animal transaction takes place in a zoo, it's important for the zoo to establish legal ownership.  If you want to send an animal to another zoo - do you own it, or is it in on loan from someone else?  If the later, do they give permission for the move?  If you bring in an animal, is it a donation, or is it on loan?  If it is on loan, what are the terms?  Is it a breeding loan - in which case, ownership of the offspring may be divided between the organization that owns the dam and the one that owns the sire (and, if both are at a separate third facility, it may be a three-way loan).  Is it an exhibit loan, with breeding prohibited?

These days, most zoos donate animals - it keeps things simpler, and reduces monetary association over the animals.  Some zoos like to retain ownership of animals on loan, just to make sure that they can guarantee that the animal won't ever wind up in a bad situation.   It can all lead to a lot of paperwork and not a little bit of confusion, depending on the situation.