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MONTHLY NEWS July 1997 World's Zoos Join Hands to Save Precious Species |
As part of an initiative to preserve endangered animal species, zoos in Japan and around the world have launched a program of lending animals to one another for breeding purposes.
Experts say that these "breeding loans" are very important since they will allow zoos to avoid inbreeding, which is believed to weaken animal fertility. Japan's Tama Zoo, famous for its success in breeding Japanese white storks, has lent the birds to several zoos in other countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the United States.The zoo also lent a male wombat to a German zoo in April this year. Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, meanwhile, lent its Komodo dragon to a U.S. zoo in December 1995. And it borrowed a leopard cat from a Singaporean zoo in August 1995 and a lowland gorilla from a zoo in Barcelona, Spain, in October 1995. The number and species of animals kept by zoos around the world are registered with the International Species Information System (ISIS), a U.S.-based organization that supports breeding loans among zoos. Nearly 500 zoos and aquariums all over the world, including four Japanese zoos, are members of the ISIS. "Species that are in danger of extinction naturally have very few remaining members," a zoo keeper at Ueno Zoo said. "And so there'll be a tendency for them to keep breeding with one another. In that sense, efforts to breed animals kept at foreign zoos will become more important from now on."
Photo: Zoos are helping to save these Japanese white storks from extinction. (Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun) 
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