The Rescue Paradox

Even before my visit to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, I was aware that plans were in the works for a relocation to a new facility.  I'm very glad to hear it, and hope that it works out for the best, because truth be told, the enclosures at CMA were a little... mediocre. 

I'm not holding it against them - they aren't a big city aquarium with a huge budget.  They are a working rescue aquarium, trying to release as many animals as possible and provide the best possible care to those that remain.  The animals that they house have no other real options.  It was this or death.  And I saw that this message resonated very clearly throughout the facility.  As visitors walked past the displays, looking at kink-tailed dolphins or flipper-less sea turtles, you could sense their... satisfaction, for lack of a better word.  By buying a ticket to the Aquarium, they knew that they were helping care for these rescued animals.

I've worked with quite a few rescues myself...  bald eagles that lost their ability to fly after colliding with power lines or getting shot.  Deer that were raised by well-meaning but misguided folks who saw a fawn crouching in the grass, jumped to the conclusion that it had been abandoned, and took it home.  Orphaned bobcat kittens and river otter pups and fox kits.  An entire aviary's worth of blind and/or crippled owls and hawks.  Turtles that lost fights with car tires and still managed to crawl away.

Some of these animals have settled in quietly and easily to life under human care - especially those that were orphaned or were otherwise very young when they had to be taken from the wild.  Those that were rescued as adults, on the other hand - they tend to be extremely shy, borderline terrified every single time I enter the enclosure.  Our bald eagle, for instance - we haven't tried to kill her any of the 5,000 times we've cleaned her enclosure since she arrived, but I suspect she thinks we're just bidding our time until her guard is down.  If she'd been a zoo-born eagle of a closely related species, say a Steller's sea eagle, she'd probably be eating out of our hands (which, considering how big a female Steller's sea eagle is, would probably end poorly for me rather than for her).

Still, when visitors see our eagle running in terror from us, they act concerned - until we mention the story of her rescue, and then suddenly we're all a bunch of heroes for taking her in when she had no place else to go.

It was during one of these conversations that I settled upon what I call the Zoo Rescue Paradox -

"The animals that zoo visitors feel the least conflict about seeing in a zoo are those that were injured and rescued from the wild, although these animals typically thrive less in a zoo than animals that were born under human care."

I've heard some folks go so far as to say that these should be the only animals in zoo or aquarium settings.

Take Winter the dolphin, for example, star of the movie Dolphin Tale and celebrity of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.  She lives in what, if we're being honest, is a rather small, dull tank.  Compare it to the enclosure that the Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have at the National Aquarium in Baltimore (at least for now) or that the Pacific white-sided dolphins and beluga whales have at the Shedd Aquarium and there is no contest as to which is better.  But because Winter is a rescue, people who would criticize the larger aquariums for having cetaceans (and would burn SeaWorld to the ground if they could) are content.

Zoo born animals are more comfortable around humans - including both their caretakers and the members of the public - than wild-born adult animals tend to be.  That, in turn, makes them easier to work with, easier to implement training and enrichment and veterinary care for, and allows keepers to provide a better quality of care.

More many years, some of the most common animal ambassadors seen in zoo education programs have been non-releasable birds of prey.  They can't fly, they can stand on a glove and be admired, and they are relatively low maintenance, so what's not to love?   As it turns out, many zoos are starting to look at using these birds with a more critical eye, at the very least becoming a lot more selective as to which birds they use.  Just because an owl will sit on a glove doesn't mean it doesn't find the whole process quite stressful.

Rescued animals can make an important addition to a zoo collection.  They can help the zoo or aquarium highlight native species and describe their natural history and conservation.  It can certainly mean the difference between life and death for the individual animal in question.  I just find it exasperating how so many people disparage the important work that zoos do by maintaining breeding groups of exotic animals under human care while acting like the rescues are a holy mission.