Captive Breeding, Zoos, and Good Sense

Abstract. A broad series of criticisms was presented by Snyder et al. (Conservation Biology 10:338–348) about the use and abuse of captive breeding as a recovery strategy for endangered species, with special regard to the limits of traditional captive breeding centers. Although some of their arguments are easily condivisible (e.g., poor success in reintroductions, high costs, risk of domestication in captive populations), others seem biased from a U.S. perspective and difficult to extend to other countries.
Concern about the ark paradigm, which has been in fashion in the zoo community over the last few years,
has been expressed by other authors (e.g., Gippoliti 1995; Hutchins & Conway 1996; Rahbek 1993) as the
need not to confuse captive breeding for immediate recovery programs (reintroduction in the wild) with captive breeding programs for other purposes (research and exhibit for naturalistic and conservation education). Some of the arguments offered by Snyder et al. (1996), however, are not so univocal. For many species establishing a self-sustaining captive population is no longer a great problem. If it is true that not all endangered species easily breed in captivity, it is also true that breeding success is increasing every year, even for the “difficult” species listed by Snyder et al. (e.g., Aye-Aye [Daubentonia madagascariensis], Feistner & Carroll 1993). The New World monkeys of the genus Leontopithecus offer
an excellent example of a formerly difficult genus, now well established in captivity. The captive population of the golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia) was on the brink of extinction in the 1970s, but, following a new husbandry protocol, it began to breed well in captivity, establishing a self-sustaining population and supplying individuals for a successful re-stocking program in the Poço dos Antas Reserve (Kleiman et al. 1991). Two other species, Leontopithecus chrysomelas and L. chrysopygus, are now breeding well in a number of zoos throughout the world (French et al. 1996). In fact, one of the major problems of many current zoo captive breeding programs is the control of population growth (e.g., van Elsacker et al. 1994).