What's in the Box?

The first Home's hinge-backed tortoises in AZA collections came to be as the result of the confiscation of 20 specimens by USFWS in 1988.  The animals, which could not be released into the wild, which were placed at the Bronx Zoo.  First captive breeding occurred 6 years later at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.  The American zoo population remaining small until a second large confiscation occurred in the 2010s.

A surprisingly large number of reptile, amphibian, fish, and invertebrate populations in American zoos have a similar origin story - they are the result of one or two large confiscations which require animals to be placed in zoos.  Perhaps it's a species that no zoos had been particularly looking for or planning to work with, then boom, suddenly a species goes from not being present at all to having a good-sized population.  Sometimes the animals live out their lifespans (which may be shortened due to the stress of being captured and smuggled prior to their rescue), then gradually die out, until it's like they were never there at all.  Sometimes that results in the establishment of a new breeding population within AZA 

I find the randomness of it somewhat intriguing.  Any moment, Fish and Wildlife could reach out about a major confiscation, and it could be anything, from turtles to tarantulas.  Likewise, things could have happened differently in the past that would have resulted in dramatically different animals being present in US zoos.  On one hand, those Home's hinge-backs could have been missed by customs and gone on their merry (or not so merry) way, and maybe only been seen by a few private collectors who hoarded them jealously.  I might never have seen one, might never have known they existed. 

On the other hand, though...

Suppose, for example, that a shipment of critically-endangered (and for many years thought-to-be-extinct) Spix's macaws had been intercepted on US soil - and those birds had formed the basis of a breeding program.  We'd actually have those incredibly rare parrots here, under our facilities, rather than in Europe.  I'd heard of some marine iguanas that had been smuggled from the Galapagos years ago and are now in secretive private hands abroad.  What if they'd been found in a cargo bay in Miami?  Historically the species did poorly in zoos, but with what we know now, and the technologies that we have available, would it be possible to have the species thriving under human care?

Obviously the ideal solution would be for no animals to be smuggled.  I'd rather not have any marine iguanas in US zoos and aquariums rather than only have them because they were taken from the wild, smuggled in cruel conditions, with many succumbing to stress and poor care before a few bedraggled survivors were rescued.  But it's always hard not to wonder, "What if..."