World's Oldest Snow Leopard Dies at Santa Barbara Zoo

You mean he didn't volunteer to spend his life in a small enclosure and then have his body sent off for dissection? I hope his immense sacrifice was worth it, and means that others of his kind might continue to live in the wild, but I doubt it.

I suppose it depends on whether you believe that some of the most vulnerable and endangered animals should be allowed to die from habitat loss and hunting, or if you believe that some of these animals should be kept in captivity to preserve their species from extinction. The idea being that humans don't have their act together yet and may kill these species before we figure out a better way, and perhaps if we figure it out in time, we could reintroduce these animals into their former habitats. On the other hand with climate change, many of these animals habitats may no longer even exist to reintroduce them back into if we were to be able to.

Is it more humane to kill off entire species with our own greed and stupidity outright, allowing these wild creatures to live in their habitats while they're being destroyed, or is it more humane to try and capture some and force them to live their lives in captivity? I suppose it is a matter of perspective, as well as the size and qualifications of the facility.

You might want to start first with the senseless destruction of habitat and hunting. Go work on that one. Slow population growth. Get though to uneducated people who do not care. Prevent them from killing these cats because they're afraid or feel dominant. As soon as you've got this figured out, and you can guarantee species habitat and longevity, then we can talk about zoos.

8:10 you might want to start by following your own advice and working on those issues if you feel they are important. The idea of warehousing animals in small areas relative to their natural ranges sounds good in theory, but it is very difficult to return animals to the wild once they have been raised in domesticated situations. The knowledge they need to survive in the wild cannot be passed down by the parents at that point. And that is assuming that we will come to our senses and stop overbreeding and destroying their habitat and can ever be returned to the wild. The New Yorker published a story about a Danish zoo killing and dissecting a young giraffe in public that discussed the studies that fail to demonstrate that zoos actually motivate people to work on preserving habitat, which is one the main reasons you hear about why they should exist.

Education of future generations will only help the efforts to save endangered species. There is no level of high definition video that can replace the experience of seeing and learning about wild animals in person. It is sad in many ways, yes. But when done correctly, the benefits of zoos outweigh the negatives in the grand scheme of things.