ENVIRONMENT-JAPAN: Artificial Breeding in Zoos Gets Boost

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Aug 31 1998 (IPS) - There is always a fuss whenever a baby animal is born at the Asa Animal Park in the Hiroshima Zoo, but the first public appearance of the park’s newest resident has attracted more than the usual attention from the cooing public.

The infant chimpanzee that the park’s proud zookeepers showed off to the public in late August was an orphan — and a product of artificial insemination.

Its mother, who died soon after giving birth, had been artificially inseminated with the frozen sperm of a male chimpanzee that had succumbed to a heart problem last October.

If plans push through, more and more Japanese zoos may soon be having animals on the ‘endangered list’ bred the same way.

Although some zoos in this country have employed expensive artificial breeding programmes the past two decades, the method is being getting a new boost from the Zoo Stock Plan formulated in August by zoos all over Japan.

The Zoo Stock Plan was drawn up together with the Switzerland- based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has called for a worldwide preservation strategy to protect the earth’s endangered species.

In response, Japanese zoos are promoting artificial breeding to help slow the depletion of wildlife.

“In cases where individual species are in danger of extinction in the wild, zoos should exhibit animals bred in captivity whenever possible,” said the Zoo Stock Plan document released recently by the Tokyo Municipality Zoo Group.

According to the document, 15 to 20 percent of the planet’s wildlife — or some 50,000 to 100,000 species — will vanish in just two years.

The basis of the zoo stock selection will be 50 species which are now reared in zoos and are listed in Appendices I and II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

“Japanese zoos believe artificial breeding programmes are a vital part of the preservation of fast dwindling wildlife populations,” explains Masaki Ito, who edits a magazine for Ueno Zoo, Japan’s largest and oldest zoo.

“They also believe the artificially bred animals must be reintroduced to the wild,” Ito added.

But zookeepers have also taken care to point out that they do not resort right away to artificial insemination. The baby chimpanzee’s parents, for example, had been kept together in the same cage for eight years to encourage mating.

But nothing happened, and the decision to get sperm from the male ape came after its untimely death. (Chimpanzees are on the endangered lists of the IUCN and the United States.)

Still, the new plan worries many conservationists, who note that the best form of wildlife protection is still protecting the natural habitat where animals can reproduce naturally.

“We are not against artificial breeding programmes,” says Eito Toyono of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). “But this should only be a small part of wildlife preservation.”

“The focus must be on preserving the natural habitat not only for the protection of animal species but also for maintaining the biodiversity balance that is so important for mankind itself,” Toyono adds.

Toyono says much of the extinction of wildlife is the result of the destruction of natural environment. He cites the case of the Japanese stork, whose population was almost decimated as a result of hunting and the use of extensive chemicals in agriculture that destroyed the bird’s natural habitat.

“This is why there must be much more emphasis on protecting environment,” says Toyono. Even if the number of animals increases through artificial breeding, there would be no suitable place in the wild where they can be released if that habitat had not been protected, the WWF campaigner adds.

Toyono also says the return of artificially bred animals into the wild is an expensive process that can take years, even decades. Even then, such projects are not always successful.

The sad story of the Japanese crane, the country’s symbol, is an example of such a failure. The country’s last female Japanese crane died last year, despite heroic efforts by the government to artificially breed the bird.

Tokyo had borrowed the ‘toki’ from China to use in its crane- breeding programme, paying an undisclosed sum to Beijing.

Japanese zoos are also undertaking an expensive programme to breed the giant panda to no definite success as yet. Some observers say China’s ‘loan fee’ for each panda reaches some 7 million dollars a year.

Japan has been more successful with artificially breeding Japanese storks — although it took local zookeepers more than two decades to get the process right.

Efforts had begun in 1965, after the depletion of the stork’s population in the north. The central government and local government supported an artificial breeding programme for the beautiful white bird after receiving six storks donated by Khabarovsk, Russia and China.

In 1989, 10 chicks hatched finally. Today, Japan has 49 storks altogether.

Last May, the programme of returning the storks bred in captivity to the wild began. A base of sorts in eastern Japan has been constructed for 35 million dollars, from which the release programme will be carried out.

Conservationists say the huge price tags attached to these programmes only mean these cannot be carried out by developing countries that are losing their wildlife fast.

Comments Toyono: “We hope that the future for wildlife will not be a situation where wildlife can only be observed in zoos in rich countries.”