This diverse and extensive collection of thirty essays by forty-eight authors from history, conservation biology and zoo professional backgrounds explores the transformation of zoos and aquariums from ‘entertaining menageries to conservation institutions’ (p. xii) at the dawn of what many are predicting is already the sixth mass extinction. The book, which emerged from a 2014 AZU–Woods Hole conference series and is modelled on Norton et al.’s Ethics on the Ark (1995), re-examines whether the ark metaphor is still tenable in light of the limits on zoo budgets and space; the success–failure ratio of ex situ and in situ conservation projects; the ever-growing biodiversity crisis; and the inherent trade-offs between species conservation, animal welfare and visitor experience. In doing so it provides a multiplicity of visions for the role of zoos and aquariums as conservation institutions.
The late Brookfield Zoo director George Rabb launches the proceedings with a poignant Foreword setting out the stakes for the discussion: the tree frog named after him, Ecnomiohyla rabborum, was declared extinct in 2016. The bulk of the book is then divided into six sections. ‘Part I: protoconservation in early European zoos’ focuses on the global origins of menageries in deep antiquity and the rise of acclimatization programmes in the nineteenth century. ‘Part II: the rise of zoo and aquarium conservation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ provides a timeline of early conservation efforts, particularly the success of William Hornaday's captive bison herd and the collective failure to save the passenger pigeon.
‘Part III: zoo and aquarium conservation today: visions and programs’ offers an overview of American Zoo Association conservation efforts, from ex situ species survival plans to coordinated in situ field research and local outreach efforts. A particularly strong article by Traylor-Holzer, Leus and Byers argues that the wild is not wild any more, and many species will require some form of hybrid management of both in situ and ex situ populations – an ‘integrated metapopulation’. Environmental-humanities scholars have been making these arguments about the end of nature for a long time, but they seem to have crossed over into mainstream conservation science.
‘Part IV: caring for nature: welfare, wellness and natural connections’ explores how zoos make decisions about which species to keep and in what conditions, balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the species. Several of the chapters question the assumption that viewing animals will necessarily lead visitors to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours, although, intriguingly, zoo director emeritus Terry Maple admits that public pressure was the impetus for the transformation of the Atlanta Zoo in the 1980s and 1990s. ‘Part V: the science and challenge of the conservation ark’ looks at genetic banking and reproductive technologies from San Diego's Frozen Zoo, to cloning, to managing endocrine levels to maximize reproductive success in captive populations. In perhaps the most provocative chapter of the collection, Joseph Mendelson III asks what should be done about captive populations that cannot be returned to the wild in the foreseeable future. At the time of writing, 1,500 Panamanian golden frogs were living in glass aquariums; any reintroduction plan would fail due to the continued presence of chytrid fungus in their habitat. Mendelson wonders whether the most ethical and realistic option might be to let some species perish, ‘even if it is not the most satisfying’ (p. 308).
Finally, ‘Part VI: alternative models and futures’ asks what the zoo of the future will look like. Multiple contradictory visions are put forward, from regional bioparks modelled after the Arizona–Sonora Desert Museum to futuristic spectacles like Bjarke Ingels's Zootopia, a three-hundred-acre ‘wild’ park that visitors fly over in glass pods. If the multiplicity of opinions in The Ark and Beyond is an augury, we may well expect not a single paradigm for zoo conservation but all these visions and more simultaneously.
One of the strongest points of this book is its desire to take aquarium conservation seriously as a semi-independent but parallel story. As Samantha Muka's chapter points out, the constellation of aquatic conservation agencies includes commercial and sports fishing and private aquarium dealers and hobbyists, all of which have little equivalency in terrestrial conservation. It is past time for this story to be told, and putting it in conversation with zoo conservation creates unexpected contrasts and juxtapositions.
The majority of chapters take a favourable stance on the subject of zoos’ utility for conservation and continued existence. (There are a few exceptions: in addition to Mendelson, Nigel Rothfels argues that captive-breeding efforts to maintain the purity of the Przewalski's horse, despite the population's hybrid genetic history, cast doubt on the claim that zoos save species from extinction.) Additionally, the book focuses primarily on zoos in North America and Europe, while mostly ignoring the developing world. This oversight is symptomatic of a larger failure of conservation professionals to acknowledge and understand the unequal and messy power relations and attempts at communication and collaboration between conservationists (from the global North and South), local people and wildlife.
On some level, one might argue the book could go further. If we take the Anthropocene as both an eco-apocalypse and a moment of possibility, zoos’ and aquariums’ roles might look radically different than even the boldest ideas here. It might mean visions of long-term captive populations, hybrid wilderness parks that serve as restoration halfway houses, rewilding projects that engage with local communities. Moving beyond the ark will mean a reckoning with these issues.
The Ark and Beyond does not answer the question of how zoos should engage in conservation. It doesn't have to, because there is not simply one answer to such a complex problem. The posing of the question and the collation of so many perspectives is itself a tremendous achievement. This book would therefore be recommended for anyone with an interest in wildlife, animal welfare and conservation.
