Tigers don't belong in zoos

But where can the big cats go? The deadly mauling in San Francisco underscores the paradox of zoos today.

By Susan McCarthy

Read more: Environment, Susan McCarthy, Politics, News, Animals

Jan. 5, 2008 | It doesn't matter whether Tatiana, the tiger who attacked three people and killed one at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day, was being teased or taunted. It doesn't matter because zoo animals shouldn't be able to escape from their enclosures no matter how rude people are to them. It also doesn't matter because even if the young men were doing nothing, or were making gestures of homage and respect, Tatiana had years of reasons to be in a bad mood.

Tigers are among zoo visitors' favorite animals. They're also one reason many people hate zoos. Saddened by the picture of misery presented by the tiger who repetitively paces back and forth, back and forth, some people never go back.

"Tigers simply don't belong in the zoo," says Adam Roberts, senior vice president of the animal advocacy organization Born Free USA. "Tigers don't belong on concrete, tigers don't belong behind bars, and frankly, tigers don't belong near people."

Life in a zoo isn't necessarily oppressive for all animals. Most animals didn't evolve to explore as much space as tigers. But tigers in most zoos are like people spending their lives locked in an empty living room. They are confined to tiny spaces, with nothing to do. Life is intensely boring, year after year. Some animal observers say zoo life may also be stressful. Tigers, who like to lurk, skulk and hide, are on display, with groups of strangers staring at them. Freedom is absent, and so are choice and control.

The San Francisco Zoo is among the many older U.S. zoos saddled with the physical legacy of tiny, inhumane cells. Instead of replacing them all, zoos build a gorilla habitat here, a giraffe palace there, while other animals languish in the old cages. In the past decade, San Francisco Zoo has sought to shed its infamy. In 2002, it unveiled the Lemur Forest, a delight to behold, with five species of lemurs trooping over a large island and clambering through tall trees and climbing structures. In 2004, it opened the expansive African Savanna, where visitors walk along an pathway, observing giraffes, zebras and oryx rambling through open grounds. And it used the rescue of two young grizzly bears from Montana to help raise funds for a new bear exhibit bigger than all its previous bear grottoes combined.

Yet the grotto in which Tatiana and the zoo's three other Siberian tigers lived was barely upgraded from 1940, when the zoo's grottoes were built as part of the Works Project Administration. It was small, dull and, as we now know, not completely tiger-proof. In December 2006, Tatiana mauled and nearly tore off the arm of keeper Lori Komejan inside the feeding cages. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, the state's workplace safety agency, Cal/OSHA, blamed the zoo, citing defects that the zoo knew about but hadn't fixed, and imposed an $18,000 penalty.

Whatever problems one zoo may have, conservationists argue that keeping tigers in zoos is a means to preserve a species in terrible danger. After all, wild tigers are losing ground fast. Assaulted by poaching and loss of habitat, populations are sinking. A hundred years ago there were probably 100,000 tigers. Now there are about 3,000.

Today, zoos are active in breeding programs to preserve tigers. Under the Species Survival Plan, only about 20 tiger breedings a year take place, planned to maximize genetic diversity. "The whole philosophy that I have lived by is that tigers in zoos are a genetic insurance policy," says Ron Tilson, the director of conservation at the Minnesota Zoo and a respected tiger expert who directs the Species Survival Plan at accredited U.S. zoos. "There are the same number of Amur [Siberian] tigers in captivity as in the wild, and there's greater genetic diversity in captive tigers." If a virus like distemper or feline leukemia devastated the wild population, he adds, it could be rebuilt from the genes of captive tigers.

Even Peter Knights, executive director of the conservation organization WildAid, which strives to preserve threatened animals, including tigers, worldwide, acknowledges that zoos are valuable. "Zoos play a positive role in sensitizing people to conservation," he says. "Tigers are in an ambassadorial role. The actual experience of seeing a physical animal is nothing like seeing it on a TV screen."

Knights, however, is skeptical about ever reintroducing tigers, even if it could be done in a large protected area. Predation isn't an easy trade to pick up, and wild cubs stay with their mothers for two years learning how it's done, being supported while they learn. "We haven't worked out how to reintroduce tigers into the wild yet," he says. At the same time, various projects with other big cats suggest that while the first generation will starve if they're not provisioned by humans, the second generation does fine. But it's true: tigers can't be reintroduced now. It's not safe for them out there.

Next page: The outlook for wild tigers looks dim