| KarmaContestant |
11-08-2011 02:05 PM |
I read this yesterday and while it seems a little saddening to split them up, I guess I understand the reasons.
Let me clarify - while I am opposed to the split it has nothing to do with the supposed sexual preference of the penguins, but everything to do with what I am sure is the totally apalling and depressing life of an animal in a zoo. These two have formed a companionship that provides familairty and comfort, and it's the destruction of that bond that is upsetting.
In the article I read yesterday, some of the reader comments focused on the fact that this is necessary because the animal is endangered; therefore we MUST force them to breed in order to ensure the suurvival of the species.
:cool:
How fricken retarded. How about letting them go in their natural habitat AND NOT KILLING THEM instead of holding them captive and forcing, or just hoping really hard, that they will reproduce.
I guess ultimately I feel zoos are a very sorry excuse to keep wild animals captive. It's not right.
No amount of human interference is going to undo what we've done to this animal species or the hundreds of others we wiped out in the name of greed.
From the much-maligned-but-still-a-good-source-of-data-Wikipedia:
Quote:
Of the 1.5-million African Penguin population estimated in 1910, only some 10% remained at the end of the 20th-century. African penguin populations, which breed in Namibia and South Africa, have declined by 95 percent since preindustrial times.
Commercial fisheries have forced these penguins to search for prey farther off shore, as well as making them eat less nutritious prey, since their preferred prey has become scarce.
As recently as the mid-twentieth century, penguin eggs were considered a delicacy and were still being collected for sale. Unfortunately, the practice was to smash eggs found a few days prior to gathering, to ensure that only fresh ones were sold. This added to the drastic decline of the penguin population around the Cape coast, a decline which was hastened by the removal of guano from islands for use as fertilizer, eliminating the burrowing material used by penguins. Penguins remain susceptible to pollution of their habitat by petrochemicals from spills, shipwrecks and cleaning of tankers while at sea.
Disaster struck on 23 June 2000, when the iron ore tanker MV Treasure sank between Robben Island and Dassen Island, South Africa. It released 1,300 tons of fuel oil, causing an unprecedented coastal bird crisis, oiling 19,000 adult penguins at the height of the best breeding season on record for this vulnerable species. The oiled birds were brought to an abandoned train repair warehouse in Cape Town to be cared for. An additional 19,500 un-oiled penguins were removed from Dassen Island and other areas before they became oiled, and were released about 800 kilometres east of Cape Town, near Port Elizabeth. This gave workers enough time to clean up the oiled waters and shores before the birds could complete their long swim home (which took the penguins between 1 and 3 weeks). Some of the penguins were named and radio-tracked as they swam back to their breeding grounds. Tens of thousands of volunteers descended upon Cape Town to help with the rescue and rehabilitation process, which was overseen by IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) and the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), and took more than three months to complete. This was the largest animal rescue event in history; more than 91% of the penguins were successfully rehabilitated and released - an amazing feat that could not have been accomplished without such a tremendous international response.
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