While zoos may bring benefits to animals when they can act as a shelter, protecting these creatures from the risks of poaching, this shelter may not assure all the needs of these animals due to lacking space for building compatible environments and poor management from the leader.
On the one hand, zoos can be a reliable destination for any animals that are threatened by poachers. Most of the poaching cases happen in wildlife or safari, where the scarcity of rangers enables illegal hunting activity to appear frequently. In zoos, the density of securities in the area is always sustained, mitigating the possibility for such violations to appear. This level of security helps conservationists not only raise awareness for environmental problems but also raise the population of endangered species, significantly increasing the survival for these animals.
On the other hand, while the possibility for survival for these animals may apparently increase when moving to the zoo, sufficient living requirements may not be assured for them because of limited space and poor management in the organization. To begin with, zoos are mostly built in cities where demand for land is high and the weather conditions may not meet the animal’s liking, so it is almost impossible to provide adequate land and suitable environment that all species can align with, especially for big animals. As a result, life quality of these creatures degrade, raising concern in the effectiveness of conserving purposes and in animal rights. This concern becomes more intense in zoos with poor protected species management and irresponsible leaders. The owner of the zoo is the one who decides the environment and the supply of food for these creatures; therefore, the animals’ condition relies significantly on the ability and dignity of the staff and with lack of standard zoo welfare in various regions, animals’ physical and mental state are being put at considerable risk. There have been cases where the staff of the organization participated in illegal trading of endangered animals such as the trading of earless monitor lizards in zoos across Europe.
In conclusion, despite the safety against poachers that zoos might bring, spatial constraints and dependence on the ability and dignity of zoos’ staff make the decision of building zoos become questionable. Therefore, to solve this issue, it is necessary for the government to tighten regulations in protected species management and have more serious penalties for illegal animal trading.