The Return of Ndume

Today, after an extensive legal battle, the gorilla Ndume returned to his home at the Cincinnati Zoo from the Gorilla Foundation, where he had spent the last nearly thirty years.  Ndume had been brought to the foundation as a companion for Koko, the famous sign-language using gorilla, although the two proved incompatible and were housed separately.  Ndume was on loan from Cincinnati, so they retained legal title to him, but the Foundation resisted sending him back, claiming that it would prove detrimental to his health and welfare.  Cincinnati countered that keeping him alone at the Foundation was far more detrimental, and a judge (as well as, surprise, PETA) agreed. 

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). 

In this case, I'm glad that Cincinnati retained ownership of Ndume.  Had they relinquished it, either by donating him or selling him, they would have had no legal options for getting him back into a social group, which he truly needs.  The thought of "owning" an animal as humanlike as a gorilla can seem distasteful to some folks (I prefer to think of it as a form of guardianship).  Whatever the case, I'm glad that the law was such that it allowed Ndume to have the Zoo looking out for his interests.