I don’t know how live this will be, but I’m going to take another shot at live blogging tonight.
{Arkansawyer} One organization I never got into this post but which was mentioned frequently as helping various missions of the zoo was the Department of Arkansas Heritage. Since I didn’t get them in their proper place, here they are, right up top.
The event is the Little Rock Science Cafe, and tonight’s topic is Zoos - Crucial Conservation and Matchmaking.
The person who is throwing this shindig is Linda Williams, whose day job is biomedical research and whose night job is writing on science and technology. I am, of course, jealous.
The panelists are, from left to right, Mark Shaw, Mike Blakely, and John Bush. The moderator is Dorothy Miles.
Okay, we’re rolling. It’s a relatively small crowd tonight–I gather there are some conflicting events in the natural world. Linda Williams introduced the Science Cafe and said a bit about its background. Dorothy Miles is introduing the panelists. First up is Mark Shaw, whose family, we now know, has hermit crabs among their pets–that’s just so cool! He’ll be talking about aninmal management.
Mark Shaw: The Little Rock Zoo wants to be (and is) accredited by the AZA (the Association of Zoos and Aquariums), which sends accreditation teams out to institutions. It’s both an accreditation investigation and a teaching experience.
The LIttle Rock Zoo has 320 different species. It’s considered a medium-sized zoo. There is a program it uses, ISIS (the International Species Information System). It’s a means of cataloging animals across various zoos and other organizations. At the zoo, there are graphics marking various aspects of the animals, among them an SSP mark from the Species Survival Plan Program, which focuses on endangered species–it’s sort of a computer dating service for endangered animals, and also includes instructional content for zoo staff. Species in this program are marked with a large rhino and a small rhino with it There is a species coordinator for each of the animals in the SSP–sadly, there isn’t enough funding for all species. (At the Little Rock Zoo, Mark Shaw is working with raptors and penguins in the SSP.) One additional point of interest is that the SSP enables small institutions capable of managing a species, but which might not be able to purchase animals from those species–it takes the price tag off the species.
A question from the audience: What sort of penguins are you getting?
Answer: African penguins.
Mike Blakely adds: There has been a dramtic change in the practice of zoos, from competitive to cooperative.
Another question: How is the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans recovering?
The Aquarium of the Americas was hard-hit. The Endangered Species program came through a bit better. Various institutions have been donating animals and resources.
Mike Blakely adds: The Audubon Zoo was in an area that came through well. The Aquarium of the Americas was devastated, due primarily to power failures and secondarily to neighborhood conditions. There was a broad effort to help these institutions–the Aquarium of the Americas has reopened on a limited basis.
Question: A primate house that was devastated by fire–I didn’t catch which one–how’s it doing?
Mike Blakely says it’s been rebuilt, and radically redesigned. Zoos throughout the country have redone their fire programs, including Little Rock’s zoo.
Question: Are you doing much with DNA tracking of individuals?
No, we’re mostly working with leg banding, implanted microchips, and so on.
The next introduction is Dr. John Bush, chair of biology at UALR. He has a background and a passion for both genetics and wildlife. He grew up in an academic family–lucky man! He’d like to say a word about slime molds–his dissertation topic–Dictyostelium dicoideum. He anticipated my question–this slime mold does the thing where the organisms going together, make spores, and then disperse. See dictyBase for more.
Dr. Bush is talking about conservation genetics, with a side trip into the ethics of DNA testing, and about cryptic species–for instance, tarantulas. There may be a cryptic species or sub-species of tarantulas–a species that’s difficult to detect and possibly is quite rare.
Dr. Miles: What species are being targeted initially?
Dr. Bush: Probably those which will bring people into zoos–more likely the cheetahs than the nematodes and the slime molds–but it’s important to save all those, too–who knows what potential for medicine or other advances might be in one of these species? There’s a whole new profession of bio-prospecting–but who owns, say, a baterium taken from an Arkansas hot spring?
Question–I missed it, but it had to do with genotyping of forests, and (I think) factory tree farming, as well as tissue sampling.
Mike Blakely mentions cryozoos and artificial insemination programs, but adds that DNA sampling and cloning techniques are supplanting those.
Dr. Bush: What about the world?
Mike Blakely: Remember, this is a global effort. The US probably has the best zoos, but the Europeans do some things we can’t, and the Asian and Australian zoos are developing very quickly. Zoos don’t tell their stories enough, and the AZA is helping us to tell that story, to justify our existence.
The last intro is Mike Blakely, under whose leadership the Little Rock Zoo received AZA accreditation.
We do want people to have fun at zoos, to be entertained. There are other purposes, though–conservation and research. We in Little Rock are participating in a species survival plan for elephants–we have a surplus of elephants, and we donate blood from them. They’re also an old population, and we’re studying how to help them (he didn’t say pachydermagerontology, but I will). Our fourth purpose is education–especially kids, our target audience. We’d like to help educate and influence them about nature and conservation. For instance, there’s a program where people can be hoisted to the top of a vermillion tree and pick a leaf–a leaf which could be used in cancer research. You can tell a kid about vermillion trees, but picking that leaf, that makes an impact.
The Little Rock Zoo had been through some hard times, but through a community effort, it was brought back. The Zoo’s board, staff, and volunteers helped carry the Zoo through times of low city support. The Zoo is now its own agency, not part of Parks and Recreation. The 2003 bond election also allowed many new projects.
There are three kinds of zoos. One kind has each animal in its own place. The second is a biome zoo, where animals from (for instance) the desert, or the rain forest, are placed together. The third is the zoogeographic zoo, Little Rock’s model–there’ll be an African area, a South American area, a North American area, which will be an Arkansas area. In our African area, for instance, there might be a poacher’s camp. Our first reaction to an elephant poacher is, “He’s a bad man.” But from his point of view, his family has been harvesting elephants for generations. It’s how they survive. Now, mechanized armies are destroying entire herds of elephants–he took one or two elephants a year, and now there are none with ivory to take. He just wants to feed his family. In parts of Africa, such people–for instance, the Masai–are being helped to support themselves via maintaining the elephants rather than killing them.
When he first started in zookeeping, he thought there would be a whole generation of kids who would just insist on conservation, but that hasn’t happened. That’s now a focus of what he’s doing in zookeeping.
Dr. Miles: What you’re describing sounds like a huge shift from my experience with zoos as a child. What’s driving this shift?
Mike Blakely: The AZA is part of it. Another thing is PETA. They’re an adversarial group, and they oppose zoos. I don’t. But they’ve made us become different and better organizations. Another thing: We cannot make money from conservation of endangered species. To bring the into the country, we have to prove we’re doing it for conservation. There’s been a change in the community, but also in staffing. Zoos are becoming more professionally staffed. Plus, it’s fun. It’s more fun to walk through a rain forest than to walk past cages. It makes people happy and excited, and it gives people a whole differnt view about education.
Question: Are you working with reintroducing species such eagles into the habitat?
Mark Shaw: Our eagles at the zoo are injured, and not able to breed. Other institutions are doing this. For instance, there’s a problem with amphibians, and we’re looking into getting involved in this, with toads, frogs, turtles, and other reptiles.
Mike Blakely: You do realize that half the reptiles in the world will be gone in a few years from this fungal infestation. Our zoo will probably have several, three or four, that we’ll work with, in conjunction with other zoos–we can’t do it by ourselves, because a disaster could happen to one zoo and destroy that species.
Question: We have box turtles in our back yard nesting. What do we do with them We don’t really want a bunch of them.
Mike Blakely: One they’ve hatched, you can take them into almost any habitat and release them. The need some protection until they’re hatched. There are rehab facilities which will take them.
Mark Shaw: The bald eagle is doing well, but we don’t want to take them off the endangered species list, because that protects their habitats.
Mike Blakely: We don’t tell people what to do. We try to tell the story. For instance, in Oregon, we had major funding from the timber industry. We told people the two competing stories: Don’t touch the old-growth forests at all, and Go ahead and but them all down. We try to present those stories rather than tell people what to think. We do ask people things like, What are you willing to pay, or to sacrifice, in order to conserve something. What changes are you willing to make?
Question: How far back can we go in trying to sequence ancient DNA?
Dr. Bush: They’re going very far back, not just DNA, but proteins and collagens that may last longer, which can give us some information, if not genetic sequencing. There is the problem in cloning of “old DNA”, where the telomeres appear to be from very old animals.
Question: What about diseases passing from animals to humans, and vice versa?
Dr. Bush: There have been some times when hoof and mouth were thought to be spread in petting zoos, and we took strong precautions. This was more a problem with traveling petting zoos, which have lower standards generally. In accredited zoos, we do have quarantines. If necessary, we would close zoos. Something like this might change zoos permanently. There was also an outbreak of salmonella from komodo dragons. People can also pass diseases to animals, especially to primates.
Question: What is the role of zoos in the overall conservation universe? One kind of public health is restaurant inspections, another is emergency rooms. Zoos seem to me like emergency rooms.
Mike Blakely: I hope we’re more than emergency rooms. We’re mandated to do field work with animals. We education people–you will not become as interested in conservation just by watching animals. In particular, we want to teach children to value conservation. One issue we haven’t touched is habitat preservation–zoos have a role to play in that. How can you get excited about the Gobi Desert? Well, what if you have an exhibit of camels. Now, the largest population of camels right now is feral camels in Australia, which are destroying habitat for native species. How do you tell that story? How can we in Little Rock say we have a good environment for our African elephants? We believe we do, but we have to tell the story with those elephants of their habitat. One proposal is to make part of Ray Winder look like an abandoned teak logging camp populated by elephants.
Follow-up question: One thing that captive breeding does is keep you from having to take more animals out of the wild, if you breed carefully.
Mike Blakely: Yes, that’s a serious issue, and that’s part of the SSP and ISIS program. We’re trying to maintain that population with 90% diversity for two hundred years. By then, we should have some place to put them. If not, then we should be able to do it for another two hundred years. Cryozoos work well with cows, but there’s a lot of money in cows. Not so much with cheetahs.
Dr. Bush: I think the technology for genetic preservation is coming, and I think it’ll be cheap. For instance, I think we’ll be able to engineer fungal immunity into those nematodes. But is it ethical to do that?
Question: I missed this one–it was about the elephants, and involved a confidentiality agreement.
Question: what about a microbiological zoo?
Dr. Bush: I saw one of those at the Washington Zoo.
Mike Blakely: You show kids anything involving, say bacteria in fecal matter, and they’re hooked.
Question: What about STEM education–this strikes me as something to show kids really interesting careers in, for instance, building zoos.
Mike Blakely: Yes. You get all the people who want to work in the zoo. Everyone wants to work with baby elephants. Well, you’ll actually be bringing in food and taking it back out in another form. But we also need accountants, mechanics, horticulturalists, fundraisers–any career can be a zoo career. Lawyers–lawyers are working with ethical questions about zoos. They keep me on the straight and narrow, and I appreciate that. What about the frogs? That’s an ethical question, and it may be a legal question.
Question: What does the word docent really mean?
Mark Bush: It’s a Latin word for teacher, and it’s a volunteer position where people, after training, can impart knowledge about zoos to visitors.
Mike Blakely: We get asked, “Can I get an ocelot for a pet?” Well, a house cat is about as close to a wildcat as you can get. Now, our cheetah exhibition has an explanation of cheetah habitats. One of our people went to Turkey and brought back and trained Anatolian sheepdogs. In Namibia, farmers shoot cheetahs because they kill their animals. Those sheepdogs were raised to protect those animals so they wouldn’t have to be shot. Kids could come into our cheetah area and pet those Anatolian sheepdogs.
Mike Blakely: The Arkansas Zoological Society is fundraising for us. We’re working on our savannah exhibit. The penguin habitat should be up in early 2009–it took time finding an architect for that. The cheeetahs we may sneak in around the end of 2008–that won’t be very expensive. The Arkansas homestead will be coming too. Some of this is contingent on what happens with Ray Winder Field–that’s not under our control.
Question: We had a bat in our garage recently–what’s their habitat? What should we do about them?
Mike Blakely: Just leave the window open. And did you notice how quiet they are? The danger of rabies is quite overrated, but we do recommend that you try not to come in contact with them. You can shoo them out with pillowcases and such. We’ve got bat boxes installed in places–they eat mosquitos, and you are so lucky to have them. You could try hanging bat boxes and providing them some habitat–there are plans at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission or you can contact us at the zoo.
{Arkansawyer} Well, that was fun–I’ll get pictures up later, if any of them are any good.
