Where Do the "Surplus" Zoo Animals Go?

A couple days ago, while engaged in an interesting conversation about zoos and conservation in a comment thread at the Global Warming blog, I realized that I've not written much about zoos on this blog yet. And there's much to discuss, so I'll be more mindful of that now. For today, I'll touch briefly on just one of the myriad problems associated with zoos: the "surplus" animals.

In the world of zoos, animals are treated like pieces of art in a museum; they are inventory in a "collection." They get traded. They are sold. They get stored away where no one can see them when there's not enough space for all the inventory to be displayed for the public. This is true at even the AZAs' "best" zoos.

-Read on after the jump-

There are times when zoo animals are no longer useful as exhibits or when there are simply too many of them. Sometimes finances become tight, and like merchandise, they need to be unloaded. And as I mentioned in a post on the breeding of elephants in zoos a couple months ago, babies--of all species--bring in hordes of visitors (and their wallets), so zoos like to keep them coming, but when there's limited space, that means moving out the older animals in that species. So where do the "surplus" animals go?

Possible fates are atrocious roadside zoos, wildly inappropriate, inadequate confinement on the property and in the homes of "private owners," and even canned hunts, where the animals humans once were supposedly protecting are set up to be killed by paying hunters looking for a trophy head or hide:

The best zoos in the country belong to the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, which has a written policy that explicitly prohibits the direct sale of "surplus" zoo animals (animals who have been bred at a zoo but for whom there is no room). However, nothing prevents zoos from selling their surplus animals to animal dealers, who in turn [may] sell them to canned hunt operations. After a two-year investigation, the San Jose Mercury News learned that "of the 19,361 mammals that left the nation's accredited zoos from 1992 through mid-1998, 7,420--or 38 percent--went to dealers, auctions, hunting ranches, unidentified individuals or unaccredited zoos or game farms." Remarkably, many of the "trophy animals" (gazelles, zebras, even rhinoceroses) that attract "humane" hunters who frequent canned hunts once called a circus or zoo home. The hypocrisy of zoo (and of circus) administrators is shameful beyond words. (Tom Regan, Empty Cages)