Noah's Ark or Schindler's List?

Click HERE for an interesting article about Zoos, featuring our own, Saint Louis Zoo, published in yesterday’s New York Times. 

My writer friend, Julie Theibert, summed it best:

“It made me really sad to think that my great-grandchildren won’t live in this magically diverse world, won’t be a part of the large mammal family that I was a part of." 

Indeed. 

The world we are leaving our grandchildren will likely be dramatically different. 

I really thought Bob Merz, manager of the Saint Louis Zoo Insectarium, articulated the scary reality of the loss of ecological diversity quite well saying, “It is like looking out the window of an airplane and seeing the rivets in the wing. You can probably lose a few, but you don’t know how many, and you really don’t want to find out.”

What the article doesn’t mention, is the Saint Louis Zoo’s WildCare Institute. The Wildcare Institute works in the field to save endangered species. Yes, they have to focus on a choice few, but this is a real, true effort to stop extinction, initiated by a Zoo.

In the end, no one goes into the field of Zoo work for the money. Everyone is working for the animals. Both within their care and in the wild. In the end, the people who spend their lives caring for animals will do everything in their power to maintain biodiversity in our world. 

Maybe Zoo’s have become more like Schindler’s List than Noah’s Ark, but maybe, with work and effort and programs like the WildCare Institute, we can and will at least save a few.