Animals kept in captivity?

[soggydrysuit]

I was just wondering what your thoughts were on this subject?

There seem to me to be more tigers in captivity than in the wild or is it just me being simple?

Cherry barbs may have been excused habitat loss by captive breeding or is that just another urban myth?

I suppose in this day and age, we have a responsibility to the rest of the animals and plants on this planet. Even to realise that they exist in the first place...

I'm being a Troll following another lounge thread concerning someone else - you don't have to feed it...

[pufferpuggirl]

I think, to some extent, it's a necessary evil. I just seen an advert yesterday about Panda bears. They are being hunted into extinction, so if we don't keep them in captivity, I'm sure they would be killed off and then gone -- forever.
I don't like wild animals being in cages, I think they deserve to roam this earth as much as we do, even more so .... but fact is, there are greedy and uncaring people who only want to make money from these animals and don't give a hoot whether they die out or not.
Humans are the worst thing to come along as we just seem to suck everything dry leaving nothing but death and despair. Animals are so beautiful .... and it hurts me to think that people mistreat and kill them with no 2nd thoughts at all.
Shame, but that's the way it is.
I don't know if that's the kind of response you were looking for, but there you go.

[Iliveinazoo]

If they're abundant in the wild and a good home is provided for them with the correct space (to suit their natural territory & habitat), food, care and attention and be able to keep them under control at all times then generally I can see no reason why not.
If they are endangered then they should only really be kept by people who can contribute to a captive breeding programme, i.e breed them themselves and cooperate with others who do the same to prevent inbreeding or failing that obtain them from a captive breeding source who sell a small number on to fund the ongoing conservation of the species.

I have recently become twitchy about keeping species of fish and inverts that can't be bred in a home aquarium, I will continue to do my best for them and hope that they have a long and healthy life however in the future I think that I will keep species that I can breed.

I also own 2 tortoises but they came from breeders and so did not contribute to the collection of wild tortoises.

[RTR]

When I first did SW (1960s), all available specimens were wild-caught. The situation now is radically different. If we did not have those - now about three full human generations - years of experience, the situation would still be much the same. We have learned a lot and made huge strides in captive husbandry. Many reefers I know now have no, repeat no, wild-collected material in their tanks. For vertebrates the situation is not as good, but getting better all the time.

It does take a lot of effort - read as time, space, money,and above all care to develop captive husbandry techniques to the level that inverts and vertebrates alike can be propagated indefinitely in captivity. Ditto for unstrained wild-caught techniques and practices such as Project Piaba helped institute.

Given the ecological degradation so common today, sustainable wild collection and captive husbandry are the only options available for selected species at least to continue to exit. Unfortunately, we cannot hope to retain full diversity - that is still far beyond our knowledge and ability.