Polar Bear controversy! What are zoos for?

[Tokis-Phoenix]

"A zoo in Germany has refused to help two polar bear cubs who were rejected by their mother and are now believed to have been eaten by her. So if zoos won't help to save the lives of animals, what are they for?

The time when visitors to British zoos enjoyed watching chimpanzees drink high tea has long gone.

After much soul-searching, today's zoos are no longer a showcase for exotic animals, rather places for conservation, education and interaction. But not always saving animal life, it would appear.

Despite a storm of protest a zoo in Nuremberg, Germany, has resisted helping an adult polar bear Vilma to rear her baby cubs and officials there think she may have now eaten them.

The authorities insisted nature should be allowed to take its course and were keen to avoid the kind of global publicity given to Knut, a bear hand-reared at Berlin Zoo last year.";


Full Story;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7175652.stm




What do you think about all of this controversy? Do you think the zoo was right to "let nature run its course" and let the polar bear cubs die, or do you disagree and believe they should have been taken from their mother and hand raised like the controversial polar bear cub called Knut?

I am really undecided about this debate right now, i currently agree with opposite opinions on both sides of the argument. Here are some of the comments in particular i agreed with sent in on the bbc page by readers;

"I would like to support Jerzy. Anti-zoo activists cannot have it both ways. Every since Berlin Zoo decided to hand rear Knut they have been complaining that this is unnatural and irresponsible as they now have to re-home a "tame" adult polar bear. Yet Nurnberg is being attacked for doing the opposite. I wish that we all lived in the same world as these activists seem to, but unfortunately I live in the real one where humans have left most of the earth's species on the brink of extinction. I would like my children to grow up and be able to see tigers, gorillas and polar bears alive rather than as pictures in a book and I am sorry to say the only way that this is going to be possible for most species is in zoos."

"Given the bears would never be released anyway, why not hand-raise them and give them to other zoos so that fewer are taken from the wild?"

"Given that the polar caps are melting and the polar bears' habitat is disappearing, endangering the species, all efforts should be made to make sure we do not lose this beautiful creature. Sometimes this means we have to interfere in the natural way of things."

Etc...


What do you think?