Zoos

Last week was one of those Grandma weeks, and I enjoyed it very much. One of the first things we did was take the grandkids to the Portland Zoo, something I have been wanting to visit for a long time but haven't been since we had children ourselves. Arriving there, it seemed this was a pretty common event for grandparents and grandkids with many doing the same thing.

When I am in Tucson one of my favorite places is the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum which is a natural history zoo in that it is all living beings whose habitat is in the Sonoran Desert from the mountains to the deserts. It is out on the desert and feels like a piece of it. It educates as well as pleases. Sometimes wild desert animals come onto the grounds to see if they can get in on the free food.

My time in Portland's zoo, which is in wooded hills, was fun. The kids were excited. The zoo was full of small 'mammals' running around and seeing animals they might have read about but would never see in nature. Enthusiasm and laughter was in the air.

Except... there was a second aspect to a zoo. The first is enjoying the animals as they moved, napped, and ate in a fairly natural looking background. But it isn't normal or natural.

I have been in zoos since I was a child and certainly some of the habitats have improved, but no zoo can be natural. Watching those animals got to be depressing. Some had outdoor enclosures, but it's a fantasy to imply it's really natural. A wolf would in nature roam over mountains and across rivers. A cougar has about a 50 mile habitat as its normal backyard. Elephants run and travel hundreds of miles when they are free. How far can you run when your enclosure is maybe 50' long? The Portland zoo used to have a large elephant population, but I guess that lost out as now it's down to only a few in enclosures that look more like the zoo of my childhood.

The only mammals that seemed happy there were the human ones. This is where my problem is: zoos at the expense of the animals living in them, do educate people. They encourage conservation, make generations more aware of what is going on out in wilderness areas where most will never go themselves. They provide pleasure and help people get a little in touch with nature.

I read recently that children today, who are so computer and television oriented, are not learning about nature, have no idea what real animals are like. For generations children were raised where they knew from where food came. They helped catch, prepare or kill it. How many experience that today?

Yes, my grandchildren are more exposed to wildlife and animals bred for food. When they visit the farm they go out and help bring in the sheep, they help change the irrigation pipe. When they are with their parents, they camp in the desert or mountains. Their father both fishes and hunts for food they do consume. The zoo was still a thrill with the animals closer and then there are the ones we wouldn't be seeing in Oregon.

I know I sound like Polyanna. I logically do know that most animals in zoos today were bred there. The days of Hatari with animals being captured in the wild and sent to the zoo are pretty much in the past. I also understand some animals have come to the zoo after injuries that would make surviving in nature impossible. I understand some species might only survive in zoos today.

Oh I get it, except to see all of those animals in small enclosures, where their lives are reduced to being moved around by zoo keepers to provide any interest, well it was sad even while I was enjoying the enthusiasm of my grandchildren and all the other children running down the sidewalks.

Before we left, we bought a membership in the zoo (we also have maintained for many years one in the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum) even though we may not be back during the coming year to either one. We do it to help provide better environments for the animals.

If zoos are going to exist, and they probably are, then having the money for larger habitats, possibly less species and better accommodations might be more enjoyable for the animals on both sides of the cages. Even for the beings we consider wild animals, life is not just about food. There are some animals that perhaps don't belong in any zoo in our part of the world where the habitat is simply too foreign.

Portland's zoo now has a section that is like the one in Arizona-- animals from our mountains and deserts. It's not perfect, but it's a start.