Modern zoos have a variety of functions both relative to the species exhibited and the conservation of wildlife in general. According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), some of these goals are:
(i) the care and welfare of the animals they exhibit;
(ii) educating and engaging public, professional, and family audiences;
(iii) species/habitat conservation;
and (iv) internal and academic research that increases our knowledge of animals and promotes AZA’s other goals.
These are the elements of knowledge about animals that rub-off on visitors at random and are a legacy of zoos being a form of entertainment and primarily a destination for visitors to attend in their leisure time.
Approximately 700 million people visit zoos and aquariums, worldwide annually. A 2011 survey indicates that participating zoos and aquariums spent at least $350 million on international wildlife conservation. In a 2012 report by the AZA, 2,700 conservation programs spent approximately $160 million on field conservation for 650 individual species, in addition to ecosystems. It is these high attendance levels and their associated income that gives accredited zoos the ability to fulfill their mission statements.
The main mission of a modern zoo is to educate visitors about the lives of its captive animals and their wild counterparts, with particular reference to the latter’s needs for protection, while fostering a love for wildlife in general. Zoos carry out research into how they influence those who visit them. This research examines the behavior of visitors in relation to specific exhibits, animals, and/or research programs. Generally it is found that visitors have more positive perceptions and behaviors about zoos, their animals, and protection initiatives the more they interact with animals, special exhibits, and the zoo programming/staff. Furthermore, zoo visitors are highly receptive to conservation messaging and are more likely to participate in on-site conservation opportunities. Repeat visitors are even more inclined to seek out conservation efforts compared to those visiting zoos for the first time. Little is known about causal factors related to these findings, but such comparisons will likely play a greater role in the future because visiting a zoo can influence people engaging in local conservation and education for living sustainably..
Starting in the 1970s zoos began to be taken as sites of conservation and preservation of animal species and are now primarily about stewardship and pastoral care of animals. They are thus involved in extremely complex administrative and regulatory networks dedicated to the classification and recording of animal DNA. In this context zoos move their animal populations around the world to ensure the best reproductive results. In many cases, zoos are self-appointed Noah’s Arks dedicated to sustaining animal diversity for future generations. Zoos are also often involved in work that protects the environments in which animals naturally occur, and so have become ambassadors fighting against land clearance and habitat destruction.
These new zoo activities in conservation management seek collectively to preserve animal diversity and represent a new ideology that informs the practices of zoos confronting the challenges of 21st century’s environmental degradation. Ultimately, conserving animal populations through frequent transfers from and to ecosystems not only enables the survival of animals but also ensures the survival of zoos themselves. The zoo is therefore a remarkable example of how self governing networks function in concert to achieve collective, collaborative goals. It achieves this through the pastoral power of caring for populations and individuals in those populations and places them at the centre of cultural ecology.
Cultural ecology is a body of interdisciplinary knowledge, that has developed to answer three basic questions about why humans have cultures. What unity underlies cultural diversity? What are the origins of cultural diversity?, and How can we understand it?
These questions deal with what virtues people need to cultivate in order to live successfully and the principle of non-injury to living beings is at the centre of a zoo’s relationships with ecology. In this context, conservation has been promoted as a belief system of the future.
For example, the common concerns between the ancient Hindu sect of Jainism and environmentalism can be found in a mutual sensitivity toward living things, a recognition of the inter-connectedness of all life-forms, and support of programs that educate others to respect and protect living systems.
In Jainism, to kill a living being is considered to be the greatest of sins. The practice of non violence is not just limited to humans or animals but is extended to all forms of life. All living beings are regarded as equal]. Jainism, as a belief system, also stresses the moral responsibility of humans in their mutual dealings and relationships with the rest of the universe and hence it expresses compassion aimed at the welfare of all living beings. Apart from preventing oneself from an act of injury or killing, Jainism also considers controlling emotions like aggression, possession, and consumption that are usually the root causes of violence and inequalities in today’s world. However, Jains are a severely esthetic minority sect who hold that souls cycle in endless torment from birth to birth because of the physical and mental pain we inflict on other beings. This element of their religiosity is a barrier to Jainism being an acceptable cultural framework upon which to develop its cultural translation into a religion based on a conservation ethic which addresses the natew cultjre dvide.
The nature–culture divide is the notion of a dichotomy between humans and the environment. In the past, insight was sought solely from the perceived tensions between nature and culture, but today it is considered whether the two entities function separately from one another, or if they are in a continuous biotic relationship with each other or not. It is a theoretical foundation of contemporary anthropology.
In East Asian society nature and culture are conceptualized as dichotomous (separate and distinct domains of reference). Some researchers consider culture to be "man's secret adaptive weapon"" in the sense that it is the core means of survival. It has been observed that the terms "nature" and "culture" can not necessarily be translated into non-western languages,[for example, the Native American scholar John Mohawk described "nature" as "anything that supports life".[4]
It has been suggested that small scale-societies can have a more symbiotic relationship with nature. But less symbiotic relations with nature are limiting small-scale communities' access to water and food resources. It was also argued that the contemporary Man-Nature divide manifests itself in different aspects of alienation and conflicts. Agriculture is only monetarily cost-efficient because it takes much more to produce than one can get out of eating their own crops. e.g. "high culture cannot come at low energy costs".
During the 1960s and 1970s Sherry Ortner showed the parallel between the divide and gender roles with women as nature and men as culture.[7]
Understanding the history of how the nature-culture dichotomy came to be will help environmentalists and policy makers alike determine a new future in human and nature relations. Some elements to understanding this history are cultural (society) differences in views of land, theories behind the perpetuation of the dichotomy, and real-world examples of its existence even today.
While zoos are expanding their missions and welcome a large number of visitors, these institutions also have their critics. Animal rights activists and others argue that many zoos contribute little to conservation efforts and also impair zoo animals’ welfare by placing them in captive environments. It is crucial to measure the impact of zoos’ education and conservation initiatives to both indicate the extent of how these organizations are fulfilling their missions and continue to demonstrate the importance of the role of zoos in society despite their critics.
Ultimately, whether an opponent or a supporter of zoological institutions, it is critical to ask: How effective are zoological environments for meeting the welfare, conservation, education, and research goals of accredited zoos? More specifically, what can we learn about how particular captive environments help or hinder these goals? And what can visitors tell us about our ability to successfully meet these goals? How does the zoo environment impact visitors, and how do these visits influence conservation efforts, both within and outside the zoo? Programes that do not look at visitor learning, post-visit outcomes, or observable zoo visitor behaviors, are deemed irrelevant to the zo0 experience.
Specific questions that zoos can answer are,
(1) what do visitors learn from their zoo experience, with an emphasis on how their behaviors and perceptions are changed?
(2) how do such visits change those visitors, specifically their conservation efforts?
(3) How does visit frequency affect conservation actions and the need for more research on comparisons between visitors and non-visitors in terms of overall conservation support?