Planning to go to the zoo this summer? Read this first ...Middle East

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I have a confession to make. When it comes to zoos, I am a hypocrite.

As a new parent, I vowed never to take my children to a zoo. No matter how leafy and spacious the enclosures, I always feel sorry for the animals inside, deprived of their liberty.

Surely, with our modern understanding of animal rights and sentience, zoos are an anachronism that people will one day look upon in the same way we now see traditions like bear baiting.

The first blow to my principles came when my children’s school offered a zoo trip, which I grudgingly signed off. It required more backbone than I possess to make the children miss out on a fun activity all their friends would be talking about.

Then, an older relative wanted to take them on a day out to a different zoo. I wasn’t being asked to get involved, so was it really fair to stand in their way?

As they got old enough for a nearby theme park – so close that nearly all our local friends have annual passes – I discovered it also has a small zoo. You can’t just go on the rides and boycott the zoo, as your entry ticket covers everything.

Could we just avoid looking at the animal cages? Not a hope. The animals and the rides are intermingled, and one of rides even passes over the tiger enclosure. Poor tigers!

Reader: I bought that annual pass. For several years running.

This week I have been thinking more about the conflict between animal rights and the potential benefits for humans of getting close to animals, after a presentation of an upgrade to the orangutan enclosure at Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire.

The project has had £18m of government funding, as the zoo will also build a lecture theatre, research lab and accommodation for visiting scientists.

The speakers were aware of the negative sentiments about their industry and stressed Twycross’s conservation work – the chief defence of zoos – as well as its educational activities and how it improves people’s mental health by helping them connect with nature.

I am sure many people who visit Twycross enjoy the experience and come away more knowledgeable. But let’s be real – there are other ways to achieve these goals. And, with typical zoo entry prices of £100 for a family of four, it can’t be for everyone.

Zoos help conservation in several ways: by maintaining small breeding populations of endangered species, public education and scientific research, said Dr Rebecca Biddle, the zoo’s chief conservation officer.

It is certainly true that the world is facing an unprecedented conservation crisis. More than 47,000 species are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

But I would question if zoos can do much to help. For one thing, just a quarter of the species kept in them are, in fact, endangered, according to Chris Lewis of the Born Free Foundation, a UK charity that campaigns against zoos.

For the other three quarters, it seems hard to justify keeping animals in enclosures that are much smaller and more boring than their natural habitats.

I’m sure some zoos do better than others – and zoo welfare standards have improved over time. Safari parks, where animals have much more space to roam around, seem less objectionable – although are notorious for resulting in disappointed children when the animals are just dots on the horizon.

And even with the biggest enclosures, the animals will necessarily be living in unnatural social groupings that they cannot remove themselves from, said Lewis.

Born Free and other groups are currently campaigning against zoos and aquaria that keep gentoo penguins – classed as in the lowest possible conservation threat status. This includes Sea Life London, which Born Free says keeps 15 gentoos in an underground enclosure with no natural light or fresh air.

Sea Life said its penguin habitat was designed with help and advice from specialist vets, and that the penguins can express their normal behaviours.

Let’s now consider the conservation argument for zoos, in terms of the animals they keep that are actually endangered.

It might seem obvious that it is helpful for zoos to keep breeding populations of species whose numbers are dwindling in the wild. But for these species, their chief threat is the disappearance or degradation of their habitats due to human encroachment. Habitat loss impacts nine in 10 threatened species, according to a recent study.

In the case of Bornean orangutans, for instance, their forests are being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations.

There are certainly things that UK funders can be doing to help tackle habitat loss, although it’s often difficult and complicated, as developing countries understandably focus more on preserving the health and livelihoods of their human populations than their animal ones.

Tigers learn to hunt from their mother, so ones bred in captivity cannot be released (Photo: Aditya Singh/Getty)

To be fair, zoos often make donations to such habitat preservation work in the animals’ home countries. Twycross, for instance, funds a charity called the Borneo Nature Foundation, which educates Indonesians and supports alternative livelihoods to palm oil farming.

But zoos usually spend only a small percentage of their income on such activities. That’s unsurprising because they are incredibly expensive to run, thanks to how much it costs to feed and house the animals, said Lewis. “In terms of a conservation organisation, their business model just does not fit what they’re trying to achieve,” he said of zoos in general.

I don’t want to pick on Twycross Zoo in particular, because I’m sure it’s no worse than any other zoo. In fact, it seems to be better than average, because, of the species that it houses, 54 per cent are threatened with extinction, and it aims to raise this to 60 per cent by 2030.

But if the goal is to stop orangutans from going extinct, we might be better off directly funding forest preservation in Borneo, rather than paying for expensive orangutan enclosures in Leicestershire.

Releasing animals back into the wild

Another common defence of zoos is that they can sometimes release animals bred in captivity back into the wild, to boost numbers.

But this is rare as it is fraught with difficulties. Animals that have been born in zoos usually don’t have the skills needed to survive in the wild and often don’t survive. They are vulnerable to attacks by predators or wild members of their own species. “The risks are so high and the chances of success are quite low,” said Lewis.

It is also incredibly resource and labour-intensive. Again, the money going to zoos might be better spent trying to fix the chief problem of habitat loss. Plus, if we don’t fix habitat loss, then the released animals may still be in danger.

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I did hear one point at Twycross’s presentation that gave me pause. Dr Biddle talked about the importance of zoos in holding “insurance populations” for species that do go extinct in the wild.

If orangutans really are wiped out in Borneo, I can’t shake the notion that it would be better for us to keep a few hundred individuals alive in zoos in Europe and elsewhere, with the hope they could survive until a different time, when we could somehow overcome the obstacles to their species living wild again.

It may well be a difficult existence for them, but the alternative, of them disappearing for good, is arguably worse.

People could receive dangerous advice from AI chatbots designed to offer mental health support, including information that could help someone kill themselves, The i Paper has found.

I’ve been watching

The new British film The Salt Path is about a middle-aged couple who begin walking the coast of south-west England in a bizarre reaction to losing their home, their livelihood, and one of them getting a terminal illness diagnosis.

The premise may sound strange and depressing, but the story drew me in, and against all the odds, I left the cinema feeling uplifted. I do recommend it.

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