Zoos 'genetic wastelands'

Reuters, MICHAEL FIELD

'NO PLACE FOR ZOOS': India's leading animal rights activist, Raj Panjawani, is in New Zealand with a message that zoos do no belong in the modern world.

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Zoos are genetic wastelands which have no real point in the modern world, a visiting animal rights advocate claims.

India's leading animal rights advocate Raj Panjwani is in New Zealand to give a lecture on animal rights at the University of Auckland.

A Delhi lawyer, he is celebrated for playing a key role in ending the ivory trade and for taking up the case of a 16-year-old schoolgirl who objected to having to dissect animals as part of her biology lessons.

Eventually the government school system was forced to back down, allowing students the option of dissecting a plant rather than an animal without losing marks.

Television had ended the reason for a zoo's existence, he told Fairfax Media.

Not only were they still caging animals – albeit in bigger cages – but in many cases they were damaging the species through inbreeding and keeping off-spring in the zoos rather than releasing them.

"To me caging an animal itself is an act of cruelty in itself," Mr Panjwani said.

Zoos came into existence in an earlier age when the only way people could see live animals was to bring them and "put them in cabinets" so people could look at them.

Television nature documentaries of animals in the wild did that education so much better.

"At that point in time, the vision was different. But should be we be blind for ever? he said.

The only rationale for a zoo was in the case of a highly critical endangered animal and the zoo had a perfect specimen.

It could be used to breed replacements which, he said, should be returned to the wild as soon as possible.

He said animals used in such zoos should not be on show.

Zoos were guilty of severe inbreeding and most zoo animals were now incapable of living in the wild.

They continued to breed off the off-spring of zoo animals.

"You are just creating a bank that is useless, like a white elephant. Just consuming resources but they are absolutely useless."

Mr Panjwani is fighting to close India's zoos.

"Zoos are supposed to be centres for instituting wildlife conservation. But the fact is that there is not a single animal in any Indian zoo which is fit to be rehabilitated."