Nuremburg Zoo in Germany recently sparked outrage when the Zoo Director, Dag Encke, announced their plan to kill nearly half of the Guinea baboons in a troop that has grown to 45 individuals after contraceptive methods failed to prevent them from breeding. The troop has subsequently become too genetically similar to be sustainable by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) breeding program standards. Once killed, the zoo has decided to either feed them to captive predators at the zoo or “hand them over to science” to be studied post-mortem.
Their enclosure was initially designed to hold just 25 primates. According to the zoo, spatial limitations in the monkey house have resulted in an increase in aggression between the baboons, causing more frequent fights often resulting in bloodshed. In the wild, baboons have been described as one of the more aggressive primate species.
Baboons will engage in fights, sometimes to the point of death, to defend their territory, food, troop/family members, and their standing in the social hierarchy. A high concentration of individuals in a small captive space leads to forced/unnatural social groupings, limited opportunity to escape conflict, and the heightened competition. These factors often lead to chronic stress, aggression, and frequent physical altercations, which put all members of the troop at a high risk of injury, death, or disease. All of this information should have been known by the zoo and steps should have been taken to ensure that overcrowding did not happen.
While baboons can demonstrate highly aggressive behavior in the face of conflict, they also develop incredibly deep and life-long bonds with troop members. Suddenly killing over half of the troop would undoubtedly result in emotional trauma that would severely disrupt the group dynamics and cause further social unrest.
Captive Breeding Not Among Conservation Actions Recommended by IUCN for Guinea Baboons
Native to Sub-Saharan Africa, Guinea baboons are categorized as Near Threatened with a Decreasing population trend by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Endangered Species.
As the most severe threats to the population status of Guinea baboons in the wild include habitat destruction and hunting due to human-animal conflict, the IUCN recommends land protection over their entire range as the most pertinent conservation action; not captive breeding, as the Nuremburg Zoo and all other zoos participating in active ex-situ breeding programs claim. As a result, these baboons must not only live their lives in deprived circumstances when compared to life in their native habitat, but are also being killed under the false guise of “conservation” for no reason other than the zoo failed to control the population and simply ran out of room.
Killing Surplus Animals is Not Uncommon in the Zoo Industry
At the Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark in 2014, a healthy two-year-old reticulated giraffe (an Endangered subspecies of giraffe) named Marius was controversially killed because he was deemed “unsuitable” by the zoo for future captive breeding efforts. Despite protests and offers to rehome Marius, he was shot dead, and then publicly dissected, necropsied, and fed to the zoo’s lions.
Following the killing of Marius, Born Free spoke out widely, condemning this incident and calling for a review of policies allowing the killing of healthy animals in zoos. Despite these controversies, killing individuals deemed “surplus” remains commonplace in the zoo industry. EAZA has estimated that its members kill between 3,000-5,000 unwanted “surplus” animals a year. North American zoos are defensive about killing, and typically refer to it as “humane euthanasia,” though euthanasia is by definition the humane killing of a severely sick or injured animal to end the animal’s suffering, not the killing of a perfectly healthy animal for the sake of human convenience. In a study attempting to quantify this in the U.S., 33 unnamed zoos were asked about their killing practices. Forty-five percent of the zoos said they were killing healthy animals; in this cohort, 79 percent were killing mammals.
EAZA has estimated that its members kill between 3,000-5,000 unwanted “surplus” animals a year.
Animal Lives Are Not “Surplus”
Zoos breeding animals in captivity to either force them to live out a life sentence for human entertainment or kill them in the name of “conservation” must be stopped. Animals in zoos are bred in captivity, never to be released into the wild. This is not conservation. Zoos cannot conserve species or meaningfully educate visitors about animals so long as they keep them in artificial environments in perpetuity or kill them when zoo staff fail them.
Killing “surplus” animals only teaches people that animals, even those threatened with extinction, are disposable. Animals have evolved for millennia to be more than “surplus,” “unsuitable,” “overrepresented,” or “useless,” as defined by humans. All animals represent integral parts of their habitats, with roles to fulfill, food to be eaten, families to be made, choices to be executed, and time to be spent—however they choose.
If you agree that humans must stop deciding how wild animals should live and be valued, including when to start and end their lives in exploitative environments in captivity, join us in choosing not to support the zoo and aquarium industry.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Devan
