Animal Keeper's Association of Africa

ABSTRACT
There are approximately 200 zoos, or zoo-type facilities in 48 countries on the continent of Africa. These vary in standards from world-class facilities to amongst the world's worst examples of zoos. This diversity of operational standard is examined and presented. Professional and public perceptions of African zoos are discussed, and elements of the ensuing ethical issues associated with zoo operation in the Developing World scrutinized. Do African zoos promote the concept that animals and ecosystems have inherent value? Do they give a positive perception of nature and wild animals? These questions are debated.

On a global scale, there are an estimated 10 -15 000 facilities that go by the voluntary appellation of “zoo” or at least serve a related function. An estimated 200 of these are located in Africa. These zoos are found in three main density clusters on continental Africa: southern Africa, West Africa and North Africa - intriguingly enough, east/central Africa having a comparatively low density of zoos. By and large a significant number of these zoos are colonial artefacts, of early to mid 1900 derivation. Today most if not all, of these zoos or zoo-type facilities are government operated in one capacity or another. These various facilities represent a considerable diversity of operational standards, ranging form world-class facilities to what are very likely, amongst the world’s worst examples of zoos. The majority of African facilities however fall somewhere between these two range points and the nature of their respective operations ranges between definitively “zoo” as we would understand the term to mean, to more sanctuary/refuge types of function.

However, it is not important whether or not all these facilities fit any specific definition of a zoo. The main issue is that our larger community - including animal rights activists - perceives them as being zoos. In this regard they reflect upon the WAZA community of zoos who are trying to contribute to conservation in an ethical and efficient manner. These facilities for the most part do not appear to be guided or constrained by any apparent scientific or ethical structure and in many respects are estranged from the our community which is characterized by various international, regional and national codes of welfare, trade, service quality, and ethics. Such facilities ravage the image of effective zoos worldwide. The implications for conservation and welfare of wild animals, and most certainly the image of zoos globally, are very serious. From a marketing perspective, all of this is relevant of course as a good public image of zoos per se, is the basis upon which all zoo marketing strategies rest.

The African situation unfortunately seems to reflect the global state of affairs and of the 200-odd “zoos” in Africa the majority are, in terms of the values of the WAZA community, in need of improvement The purpose of my presentation here is to have a closer look at the operational parameters of some of these zoos and compare them against Developed World Zoo perceptions and expectations

At this year’s WAZA conference in Budapest, the WAZA Assembly ratified “COM 62-04” referring to zoos in need of improvement. This extensive document covers a number of different issues in this regard, but pertinent to this presentation is the 13-point list of best practise in Zoos. These being:

1. Compliance with the applicable legal requirements;
2. The establishment and provision of a supportive environment for the animals, personnel and public (duty of care);
3. The maintenance of the collection of animals in accordance with ethical animal welfare and scientific management principles, for the foremost and demonstrable purpose of conservation through exhibition, education and research;
4. A structured continuity of competence;
5. Having a statement of operational succession (Continuity of operations; succession plan; exit strategy; contingency plan);
6. Active involvement in the conservation of biodiversity (being involved in in situ conservation);
7. Working with institutions that need assistance to improve their standards, to achieve conservation goals, and to benefit the animals they hold;
8. Being committed to communication, cooperation and coordination among institutions;
9. The promotion of civic good will in the larger community;
10. The promotion of the fact that animals and ecosystems have inherent value (Promotion of a positive perception of nature and wild animals);
11. The pursuit of environmentally sustainable practices;
12. The provision of educational opportunities for learning about animals and their environments and;
13. Compliance with the WAZA Code of Ethics and Animal Welfare and/or equivalent industry standard.

WAZA goes on to state that the minimum norms of standard zoo practice are compliance with the applicable legal requirements and the establishment and provision of a supportive environment for the animals, personnel and public – as in Best Practices 1 and 2 above. One might say that failure to comply with these two points would make a zoo “substandard” in this application. Very often from a Developed World perceptive, we rate such apparent substandard practice as being a product of poor socio-economic circumstance.

I am not so sure. In pursuit of the PAAZAB WOZA Africa initiative aimed at increasing African zoo participation and involvement in the Association, I have had cause to visit a great many African zoos in the past 5 years.  I am becoming increasingly aware that the fact of a number of these African Zoos being "substandard" by WAZA community sensitivities is not always a result of a lack of funds and/or fiscal neglect. It seems to be a reflection of social mores, perceptions and value systems.

Litter and dilapidation frequently seem to be a feature of African Zoos. However, set one foot outside of the zoo into the local community and the degree of litter and dilapidation is at least equal to - or worse - than that found in the zoo. In the early days of my visitations I felt constrained to make comment to the CEO of one such zoo of what I perceived to be the poor state of repair of the facility and the amount of rubbish and litter lying around at the time. The CEO concerned actually took umbrage and indignantly pointed out that the grounds were cleaner and in better repair than anything outside of the zoo. He said that they prided themselves on the degree of cleanliness within the zoo.

In this regard he was quite correct. Points 9 and 10 of the WAZA standard of Best Practice refers to the need for a visit to a zoo as being a positive and uplifting experience and the promotion of goodwill within the civic community. In this particular case as far as I could tell, these were the exact outcomes that the local community was acquiring from their zoo and visits therein. In fact, my attention was drawn to the fact that security guards had to be employed to stop folk climbing over the walls to get into the zoo because it was perceived to be such a nice place to be.

A common rule I have found - globally - is that the local zoo is a mirror of the local value systems. So from our point-of-view, if the wholesale standard of living is different to the way we of Developed World thinking would prefer it to be, then we would expect to see that value set reflected in the zoo - and we do. This same zoo had sent senior staff overseas for advanced training at their own expense. As a government organ they were not short of money and one could hardly argue that their management staff are ignorant either. My suggestion that funds be spent on repairing sagging mesh was treated with great surprise. Why should they spend good money on such a thing? They are perfectly adequate as they are. What struck me - and it was not only in this particular zoo, I have encountered this elsewhere - is that they genuinely did not see what I was seeing. They sincerely neither saw nor felt what was for me a very real aurora of neglect and dilapidation imparted by rusty mesh, junk iron lying all over the place, plastic litter, and so on. Is this a case of a circumstance that at some time or another all of us are all guilty of – not being able to see the forest because of the trees - or something else, which we as proponents of Developed World Zoo operation do not grasp?  To put it another way, such things might matter to us, but they clearly did not matter to visitor ship of that zoo.

In a similar vein, welfare issues are thus influenced. Outside the zoo domestic animals by and large are treated - by our perception - with either horrific neglect or gratuitous cruelty. Starving feral dogs, chickens tied together en route to market, cows trussed up and levered into the boots of cars. In South Africa recently an old Renault 4 was pulled over. 4 full-grown cows had been crammed into it. The keepers in the zoo are employed from this very community that perpetuates this type of thing. How can we expect them to treat the animals in the zoo in a significantly different manner? Indeed one can argue that in a number of circumstances, the standard of living for some of the animals in the zoo is not only higher that domestic animals outside of the zoo, it is also higher than that for a number of people outside of the zoo. At least the zoo animals have a roof over their head and receive something along the lines of free food on a comparatively regular basis. We might not see it in this light, but be assured that very often, both the keepers and the visitors’ alike do.

Can it be that the development of the concept of living things having their own intrinsic value apart from an anthropocentric utilitarian one is culturally motivated and really has nothing to do with socio-economics?

Another element that is a reflection of local value systems is the fact that very often, the appointment in a senior capacity at the local (national level) zoo is politically motivated. The Director and his cadre of the staff are politically appointed. Such folk usually have no background in Zoo Biology or anything remotely resembling it – but perhaps now and again, at least some qualification in agriculture or forestry. Budget is allocated to the zoo from central government, and quite often more than reasonable budgets too. However, the political appointee is of course expected to soak up this funding in a personal capacity - which was why he given the job to begin with - and only the bare minimum actually gets to the zoo itself; the baksheesh being a job perk. I would only add here that this same process has been known to occur in Developed World Zoos. Westerners call this corruption, overlooking the fact that exact same process in the developed world is known as commission.

The flip side of the coin in terms of political appointment is that you get a really good guy who makes a difference, changes things, upgrades and does a good job. One of two things happens then. He impresses his superiors either positively or negatively and gets transferred; or discovering his own potential in the process, he moves on to higher and better things and gets himself transferred. The net effect is the same.

Another ambient value system that I am becoming sensitive to goes along the lines of, why should I commit funds and resources to something when I can get some other idiot to do it instead. Basically this, if funding bodies offer a no-strings attached free lunch, should they be surprised when it is not only accepted, but generates in turn the expectation of a regular supply of strings-free lunches indeterminately off into the future.

Throwing some other thoughts out there as well:

I am concerned that in many case we ourselves - as proponents of Developed World value systems - are actually being hypocritical in our approach to these zoos. We seem to go out of our way to prevent them from operating the same way as we actively promote in our own zoos. A fundamental characteristic of all is zoos all over the world is that they are primarily open to and administered for, the visiting public. The visiting public with that feet-through-gate capacity provide an important source (in some cases the only source) of funding to that facility. Then there are the issues of the education/conservation awareness missions of zoos that require an audience to speak to. In short then getting visitors regularly, often and in at least stable numbers, through the gate is vitally important to zoos. Zoos are a bulk audience industry. The way this is done in the Developed World is to exhibit exotic animals and/or provide some level of animal-based experience. So Developed World zoos are packed full of animals that for the most part are not indigenous to that country. Why then do we baulk at the idea that Developing World zoos would also like to do the same, and indeed would be fiscally rewarding for them to do so?

A Madagascan zoo being a case in point as the present director there remarked to me recently that he would love to be able to exhibit lions and tigers. By African standards the zoo concerned has a good public turn in excess of 200 000 people a year. The director felt that the exhibition of lions alone would double this and I am inclined to believe him. However, because this is Madagascar no one will give him any lions. Nope, say the Western zoos involved with this zoo, the focus must be solely upon Madagascan fauna.

Why?

This is exactly the same as saying that London Zoo should solely focus on exhibiting British animals. Hey, they’re both islands?  If we have concerns as to husbandry and welfare issues associated with the keeping of big cats there, then instead of constructing them another useless building to temporarily house the animals we want to rip off out of Madagascar, temporarily operated by our staff on the ground there, why don't we build them a lion enclosure, train up their staff to manage lions on site or back at our zoo and give them some lions? In other words actually give them something meaningful by allowing them to operate the same way as we do; to paraphrase the proverb, teaching them to fish for themselves. We always want to take animals away from these zoos - we never are prepared to give them any back. You will detect that I am twitchy on this issue.

In another incident of what I regard as double standards, an African zoo has several groups of human-conditioned primates free-ranging in it. At feeding time, these primates come down and clamber all over the keepers. The public are not even allowed to see this let alone actually participate in it. The reason being - I am told - is because the mentoring Developed World Zoo involved with this facility does not want the locals to get the impression that these animals can be kept as pets. The same zoo back at home has a walk-through lorikeet aviary where the visitors are actively encouraged to feed the birds and interact with them in a country where pet shops routinely sell imported wild-caught Psittacines to anyone who has the money. 

However I digress. The point I want to drive at is that more often than is realised, the issues with these zoos are not always just funding or capacity-based. We need to take cognisance of the fact that value systems in those parts of the world might be diametrically opposite to ours and more importantly that in many cases there is nothing necessarily wrong with that.

I recently heard the argument that because Africa is so full of wildlife and game reserves, there is actually no reason to have zoos in Africa at all.  How I wish this were true. Unfortunately the premise does not take into account the immense level of urbanization taking place within Africa:

In 1900 we think that about 95% of Africa's inhabitants south of Sahara lived from the primary occupations of farming, hunting & gathering, cattle nomadism, and fishing meaning that probably less than 5% were urban. In 1950 (the start of the independence period) 14.7% of Africa's inhabitants were urban, in 2000 had it risen to 37.2% and it is expected to rise to 45.3% in 2015, in effect 3.76% per year (UN 2002 statistics). The Nigerian city of Lagos that in 1963 had 665 000 inhabitants and 8.7 million in 2000 is expected to become the worlds 11th biggest city by 2015 with 16 million inhabitants. Interestingly enough the nearest zoo to Lagos is in Ibadan, 150km away. The urbanization of most of Africa is moving fast forward, and especially south of Sahara. These are populations of people, just like in the Europe and American, that have no contact with, nor expectation thereof , of seeing or interacting with wildlife.

So what is my point? African Zoos – quo vadis? Simply this, these zoos fulfil exactly the same function and purpose, as do Western Zoos and often do so completely in accord with WAZA tenants of Best Practice. They are legally mandated, they supply a supportive environment to the staff, animals and visiting public, they promote civil goodwill in the larger community and they actively sanction the concept that animals and ecosystems have inherent value.

I am not of course suggesting that animal welfare issues in these facilities be overlooked or ignored – and there are welfare issues of note in many of these places. I certainly do not suggest that such issues should not be condemned. However we do need to be considerably more sensitive to and understanding of, the social conditions manifest in these circumstances. We might not feel that these zoos have a very good public image, but I can assure you to their visitor ship in their own countries, they do. Perhaps we need to think about that.

So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and give a lot more thought and deliberation to helping these zoos do a better job.

Thank you.