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Box C2

This Generation’s Challenge
Gary Priest

The nineteenth Century witnessed the dawn sound the alarm. Without popular support, our
of the industrial revolution and within the second strategic priority, to protect and con-
span of 100 years, efficient machines were serve endangered species, will become moot.
developed that harvested the earth’s abundant We simply cannot allow the failure of either pri-
resources at increasingly unsustainable rates. ority. Without wide popular support, our second
During the twentieth century, two World mission to protect and conserve endangered
Wars and the growing demands of expanding species will become a moot point. We simply
human populations saw the curtain close on cannot allow the failure of either mission.
the earth’s truly wild places. By the twenty‐ Fortunately, something is being done and it
first century, virtually all the earth’s animals, is amazing. Concerned young people all over
to some degree, were managed by humans. the world are responding to the alarm and
In a perfect world, every human would have are dedicating their lives to reversing the
the opportunity to appreciate the diversity of course we have been on.
life that has existed on earth, cherish it and In the past 25 years, captive management
protect it, as our common and irreplaceable programmes (Species Survival Plans, SSPs;
biological inheritance. But, as our population European Endangered Species Programmes,
approaches eight billion people, we must rec- EEPs, and a host of comparable programmes
ognise the situation for what it is and not around the world) have been developed and
what we wish it would be. As a result, the mis- adopted by zoos and aquariums globally (Che‐
sion of zoos and aquariums has never been Castaldo et al. 2018). The goal for each plan is
more pressing than it is right now. Today, in to preserve the maximum genetic diversity of
view of the challenges faced by the earth’s ani- the founding population and maintain a genet-
mals, zoos and aquariums have two primary ically diverse and demographically robust pop-
roles; 1. increase human’s collective apprecia- ulation. Plans for over 600 species exist with
tion of animals and our need to protect and more being added each year. This work
conserve them; 2. apply every conceivable involves geneticists, population biologists,
energy and technology to maintain sustaina- reproductive physiologists, zoologists, and
ble captive populations and work collabora- thousands of dedicated animal care workers.
tively with in situ conservation projects. We know that animal behaviour is plastic
The World Zoo and Aquarium Association and is modified by experience (Wong and
reports that annually over 700 million people Ulrika 2015). It is this same adaptive mecha-
visit zoos and aquariums (Gusset and Dick nism that allows animals to exploit changes in
2011). As I see it, we have two strategic priori- their environment. Using well established
ties. First, we must change hearts and minds and positive reinforcement techniques, a huge

Zoo Animal Learning and Training, First Edition. Edited by Vicky A. Melfi, Nicole R. Dorey, and Samantha J. Ward.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.