some type of adult girl

why-animals-do-the-thing:

I know a lot of people are seeing stuff about this report, and I wanted to provide some context for the apparent politics involved in it for folk to think about while I’m dissecting the full thing. So I’m not going to comment on the allegations - I’m still doing my research, because they’re classing a huge range of types of training and interactions into a single category of “abuse” - but there’s some industry politics / purposeful spins on messaging that it’s worth being aware of. 

1. WAZA (the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) is not an accreditation body. What that means is that they do not oversee how facilities function, do not inspect member zoos, and don’t promulgate standards that must be met. They’re a membership group: basically a fancy professional club. Saying a zoo is “accredited by X” tells you a lot more than saying “X zoo is a WAZA member.” The article kinda touches on it, but not in much detail. WAZA literally can’t tell member zoos what to do. 

2. WAZA does not have “indirect members”, which is the “category” World Animal Protection chose that results in such a high number of “associated facilities.” WAZA has two relevant membership category types to this topic: regional associations and individual facilities. So the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Pan African Association of Zoological Gardens, Aquaria and Botanical Gardens, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, South East Asian Zoos Association, etc, are all regional associations. These are the groups that are tasked with accrediting / regulating / promulgating standards for zoological facilities in their areas, and the actual organizations are WAZA members in their own right. Individual facilities can join WAZA as members (as long as they’re also members in good standing with a regional association. But that doesn’t mean that if AZA is a member of WAZA, and X zoo is an AZA-accredited facility, that X zoo is a member of WAZA. So when WAP says “75 percent of WAZA’s 1,241 members—including those defined by WAP as “indirect” members (zoos or aquariums that belong to WAZA-member associations)—offer at least one animal-visitor interaction” that’s just… a mess. WAZA actually only has 400 members around the world (WAP says 281 direct facility members), and that includes the regional associations. What this tells us is that WAP isn’t just looking to say “man, there are some zoos doing shit they shouldn’t, let’s talk about it” - they’re directly attempting to target WAZA with this report, because they manipulated the data in order to make a big splashy statement and put pressure on the organization. 

3. As far as I know, WAZA has never claimed to be the “gold standard” for zoos. That’s language from the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums. WAZA /knows/ that not all facilities accredited by and involved with their regional associations are necessarily the best, but they use the relationship they have with those groups to help increase facility quality and animal care throughout those regions. Again, language has been picked by WAP that’s /literally just not accurate/ to make WAZA look bad here: there’s a difference between “a bunch of places associated with X membership group aren’t great” and “these facilities associated with a group that purports to be the gold standard aren’t living up to it.” WAP has picked the latter messaging strategy, but WAZA hasn’t ever claimed to be comprised of “the best zoos.” (Again, that’s AZA). WAZA instead says it “ promotes cooperation between leading zoos, aquariums, national and regional associations, as well as with leading wildlife experts, academies, and universities” and “provides support for species-conservation management and husbandry of animals in human care, while encouraging the highest standards in member institutions.” The accurate language I can find is that WAZA sees itself as a “unifying organisation for the world’s leading zoos and aquariums.” But, remember, “leading” is not the same as “gold standard.” If you’ve got a zoo in an area with fairly sub-par animal care culture that’s working really hard to grow above and beyond that, that can reasonably be called a “leading” zoo in that region. 

4. It’s pretty clear this is a specifically targeted campaign, because when you go to the report page, all the “act now” messaging is about contacting the leadership of WAZA and AZA. Now, the report said it identified issues at facilities all over the world - and only /one/ of the facilities “of most concern” is actually in the US (SW San Antonio), and it’s not even actually a member of WAZA. So why aren’t they encouraging people to contact EAZA, or JAZA, or any of the relevant accrediting bodies associated with those other places? Because this is a report targeted at a Western audience and that (so far) messaging about appears to be targeting what American anti-zoo groups care about. For example, the report brings up the fact that captive lions in the South Africa zoological industry are known to be feeding into black market trade - but it doesn’t say you should advocate there, no, it want readers to take action by specifically contacting AZA - a group which has very little power to influence the behavior of zoological facilities in other countries. 

5. This report is based on “desktop research” - a term which is never defined, but which I’m pretty sure means “we googled it” - and 12 site visits. They’re alleging animal abuse at 900 zoos around the world because they looked them up on google. Yes, you can find a lot of information on google, but if you’re an international non-profit putting out a report that you’re hoping will influence the shape of animal use and animal care at facilities around the globe… it seems like you’d expect a better quality of research. Unless the focus is more sensationalized viral media, and not accurate scientific information. 

6. Guess what? The report doesn’t actually list the facilities and the practices WAP is alleging are abusive. It contains the 12 of “most concern” (the ones they actually visited) but past that, there’s no data to look at. So cool, there’s around 888 zoos out there that are doing practices this international non-profit thinks are bad enough to contact major media groups about … but they’re not going to actually tell us which ones, or why. Seems like a really great way to actually advocate for the welfare of the animals at those 800+ facilities, not giving the public any information on which to act. 

Regardless of your feelings about any specific zoo or aquarium, or any specific animal use practice, it’s really important to be aware of how information is manipulated and misrepresented in order to encourage a specific emotional response or action from you. I’ll update about this whole situation once I’ve had time to fully study the report. 

(via justnoodlefishthings)