Each species in trouble presents unique challenges, including inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity, sibling rivalry on an extreme scale, and individuals who may never have seen another of their kind.  There are some successes with captive breeding.  For example, the black-footed ferret, once thought to be entirely extinct, is now being reintroduced to its natural home on the American plains after an incredible intervention by scientists.  But rebounding in artificial settings doesn’t put endangered animals in the clear – populations may grow, but without successful action to preserve and maintain their wild habitats, they may be confined to laboratories and sanctuaries forever.

The Loneliest Animals follows the plight of these incredible, charismatic creatures and the struggles of the dedicated conservationists who fight for them.

The Loneliest Animals premieres Sunday, April 19 at 8pm on PBS (check local listings).

Black-footed ferret in a captive breeding program at the Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center

There are 16,928 species currently listed as threatened, and the present world-wide extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural rate.  Faced with such overwhelmingly drastic figures, what can we do, and what should we do?  For some of the loneliest animals on the planet, captive breeding programs and human intervention may be the only hope.  As habitats continue to shrink, scientists and conservation biologists face an increasingly daunting task.  Still, they must try to do what they can.  For some species it is too late.  Hopefully, for others, it may be a new beginning.

Captive breeding programs with the goal of reintroduction have existed since the 1960s.  One of the first successful programs was the reintroduction of the Arabian oryx.  The Arabian oryx is a striking and elegant white ungulate that roamed the Arabian Peninsula in large numbers until they were hunted to extinction in the wild in 1972.  The Phoenix Zoo (in Arizona?) started a captive breeding program in 1962, and from 9 individuals, over 200 young were successfully bred.  These oryx were distributed to zoos around the world, and many more herds were started in captivity.  In 1982 the first Arabian oryx were reintroduced to Oman, where their numbers increased over the next two decades.  Currently there are reintroduced populations in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, with a total population of approximately 1,100 individuals.  The populations in Saudi Arabia and Israel are increasing; however, the population in Oman at the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary has shrunk from a high of 450 individuals in 1996 to only about 50 oryx in 2008.  This is largely due to illegal (capturing – what is capturing if not poaching?) and poaching, and the degradation of the sanctuary after the Omani government decided to open up 90% of the park to petroleum prospects.  Sadly, the 50 remaining oryx in Oman are all males. Unless someone steps in to help, this population will disappear.

The plight of the Arabian oryx in Oman is not the only story of its kind.  Over and over again the same conclusion is reached:  captive breeding and reintroduction programs cannot succeed without long-term wild habitat preservation and protection.

In 2007, 100 Arabian oryx were released into a fenced off area of wilderness in the United Arab Emirates, the first step of a new reintroduction program that plans to release 500 oryx by 2012. So depsite the loss, yet again, of the Arabian oryx in Oman, perhaps there is still hope for the species. As with all captive breeding programs, there is always a glimmer of hope, and in the face of massive extinctions of the world’s organisms, any steps necessary to grant a few species a second chance is well worth it.

More recent captive breeding success stories include the California condor, black-footed ferret, golden lion tamarin, and red wolf.  In order to survive once released, animals must be taught basic survival skills in captivity.  Some skills come innately to some species, but others must be learned socially.  They must learn how to find food, avoid predation, attract a mate, and build or find adequate shelter.

All this training, in addition to other costs, can add up to quite a large tab for captive breeding programs.  The most expensive captive program ever was the California condor reintroduction program, which has cost over 35 million dollars since 1987, when the last 22 wild California condors were captured and the program began.  In the early years of the program, many reintroduced California condors died after release due to lead poisoning, and collisions with power lines.  Since 1994, however, captive-bred condors have been trained to avoid power lines, and the number of deaths associated with them has greatly decreased.

It takes time to figure out what is best for a species and to build a successful reintroduction program based on that knowledge.  The goal of captive breeding programs is not to just increase population numbers, but to give those new individuals a better chance of survival.  How to best limit the dangers to animals after their release, and how to monitor their success are both important facets of captive breeding programs.  Lead poisoning, for example, could not have been anticipated.  California condors have extremely potent digestive acids that dissolve lead bullet scraps to the point where they can be absorbed through ingestion.  To circumvent that problem, in 2008, the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act, a federal bill that prohibits hunters from using lead bullets in the California condor’s range, went into effect.  It proved once more that federal protection and environmental legislature are critically important aspects of conservation efforts.  Behind the work and care of every human involved in captive breeding, there must be funding, and there must be public support.  Without them, these last ditch efforts to save entire species or subspecies would not be possible.

Works Consulted:

Curio, E. (1996) Conservation needs ethology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 11(6): 260-263

Griffith, B. et al. (1989) Translocation as a species conservation tool: status and strategy. Science, 245: 477-480

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. (2008) Oryx leucoryx. Retrieved April 1, 2009 from
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/15569.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. (2008) 2008 Red List summary stats. Retrieved April 1, 2009 from
http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/red_list/2008_red_list_summary_statistics/.

Sample, Ian. (2 July 2008). Wildlife extinction rates ‘seriously underestimated.’ The Guardian.
Retrieved April 1, 2009 from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/02/climatechange.endangeredspecies?fb_page_id=15041226930&.

Toone, W.D., Wallace, M.P. (1994) The extinction in the wild and reintroduction of the
California condor (Gymnokyps californianus), in Creative Conservation: Interactive
Management of Wild and Captive Animals (Olney, P.J.S., Mace, G.M. and Feistner, A.T.C., eds). Chapman & Hall: 411-419.

Captive Breeding and Species Reintroductions
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dallan/nre220/outline23.htm.

In the summer of 2003, word got out that fishermen in the Solomon Islands, a tropical chain of islands in the Pacific, had trapped some 200 bottlenose dolphins in a shallow inlet. After securing the animals’ captivity, they began selling them to the highest bidders.

Who were the buyers interested in such cruelly captured creatures? Marine parks that prize the intelligent animals for their ability to perform acrobatic tricks, and hotels and amusement centers that charge guests a hefty fee to “swim with the dolphins.” Like the dolphins captured in Bluefields, Nicaragua in NATURE’s The Dolphin Defender, these animals were destined for hotels. Although the Bluefields dolphins were eventually rescued and released, several dozen of the Solomon dolphins were not as lucky and were flown to tourist hotels in Mexico. The imports drew fierce protests from conservationists and condemnation from Mexican newspaper editors, who said the trade violated international conservation laws. Eventually, the government responded that it would more carefully scrutinize future dolphin imports.

Even today, despite government efforts, “the demand for live dolphins is just exploding,” says Hardy Jones, the filmmaker and dolphin advocate behind The Dolphin Defender. “The trade is being encouraged by people willing to pay $150 each to jump in the water and swim with a captive dolphin for an hour.” For decades, Jones has been working to expose and stop the trade in dolphins which he says contributes to the decline of some species. In Japan, for instance, where dolphin meat is considered a delicacy, the trade is helping bring back another troubling practice: the annual dolphin hunt, which Japanese fishermen largely abandoned in the 1970s after international protests.

Traditionally, the hunts took place in several seaside villages. Fishermen would corral the dolphins into nets or weirs, then kill and butcher them. The meat brings a good price on the Japanese market, and was at one time an important source of income for some families. (Jones says dolphin meat today is contaminated with mercury and other pollutants, and not very safe to eat.)

In 1980, Jones filmed one of the hunts and gave the bloody, dramatic footage to television networks. Many viewers were shocked, and the ensuing protests persuaded many fishermen to abandon the practice. One village eventually established a dolphin-watching industry to help replace lost income.

Scientists rehabilitate a Bluefields dolphin before releasing it back into the wild.

But Jones says the growing dolphin trade, which some analysts estimate involves up to 1,000 animals a year, is encouraging Japanese villagers to bring back the hunt. That’s because they now have two kinds of customers: those interested in buying the meat, and those willing to pay $20,000 or more for a single live dolphin.

“Japan is becoming a major source of dolphins along with China and some other nations,” Jones says. Demand is also coming from Asia, where an economic boom is promoting the growth of tourism. In the United States, dolphin captures are strictly regulated; there have been no legal captures since 1993. Some marine parks have learned to breed dolphins while others display injured animals that are being rehabilitated or import animals from European parks.

In the Solomon Islands, the controversy over the 2003 captures has died down. But some conservationists say an unstable political situation has allowed the trade to continue on a smaller scale.

The protests have had an impact elsewhere. Last year, a dolphin hunter obtained a permit from the government of the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda to capture a dozen dolphins. After the public found out about the permits, however, protesters convinced officials to change their minds.

For decades after people first tried to keep gorillas in captivity, any gorilla’s path from the forest to the zoo was soaked in blood. As NATURE’s Snowflake: The White Gorilla shows, the animals had to be captured in the wild when they were young — before they grew too big and powerful to handle. Hunters would first have to kill the baby’s parents and sometimes its entire family.

This gruesome situation began to change in 1956 when a zoo in Columbus, Ohio became home to the first gorilla ever born and raised in captivity. Her name is Colo, and “she almost didn’t make it,” says Jeffrey Lyttle, author of Gorillas In Our Midst, a book about the Columbus Zoo gorillas.

“At the time, the zookeepers knew that Colo’s [mother] was pregnant, but nobody knew the gestation period of a gorilla,” Lyttle recalls. “They thought it was nine months, like humans, but it turns out it is closer to eight and a half months. So they weren’t expecting the birth. A vet named Warren Thomas was making his morning rounds when he discovered Colo, in her amniotic sack, lying on the concrete floor of her mother’s cage. He reached in, tore open the sack, and began giving Colo mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

Luckily, the little gorilla lived. “It was huge national news,” says Lyttle. But zookeepers believed that Colo’s mother wasn’t up to the task of raising her baby. They were probably right, since many captive gorillas never had a chance to learn parenting skills from their own parents in the wild. “So Columbus built a special nursery for her,” Lyttle explains. “Zoo visitation went through the roof. They would dress Colo up for the holidays — put her in an Easter bonnet and fancy dresses. Some people say she still likes to wear her food dish as a hat because she spent so much of her infancy wearing hats.”

A dozen years later, Colo gave birth to her first offspring, and she has since had several more; in NATURE’s Snowflake, viewers get to meet Dotty, Colo’s great-granddaughter.

Much has changed in the years between Colo’s and Dotty’s births. More and more, captive gorilla babies are being raised by their own mothers as zookeepers learn how to re-create more natural conditions. In cases where the mother still may not be able to handle the job, they have developed sophisticated surrogate parenting programs, where the babies spend a short time with human caregivers and then are quickly given to other gorillas to raise.

In Snowflake, Dotty meets her surrogate parents for the first time. It’s a tense moment — some surrogate parents won’t accept and care for their new offspring. Luckily, Dotty was accepted and is doing fine.

“Surrogacy has been extremely successful,” says Lyttle. “It was risky at first. These are very valuable animals, and there were these ideas that introducing an infant into a troop [a clan-like group of gorillas] could provoke violence. But the keepers believed surrogacy would work, and it has. It really shows how much our ignorance about gorilla social life has changed.”

Indeed, surrogacy has helped end much of the trade in wild gorillas. Today, about half of all gorillas that live in captivity are like Dotty — born and raised in a zoo, not torn from their families in the wild.

The fall of 2003 brought sad days to the zoo in Barcelona, Spain. After nearly 40 years, Snowflake the white gorilla — who was the zoo’s most famous resident — was nearing death. Crowds gathered to pay a last, respectful visit to the elderly, ivory-maned gorilla, an emblem of one of Spain’s proudest cities. His wrinkled face and knowing eyes stared out from posters and postcards on every corner.

Snowflake’s keepers could barely conceal their pain. “Snowflake has lost his desire to play around with the rest of the family,” said one, sighing; “he prefers to sit alone, out of sight.” The keeper mentioned that caretakers were giving the gorilla painkillers.

The end came on November 24, 2003, when Snowflake died from cancer. “Until the end Snowflake enjoyed a fantastic quality of life, interacting normally with his children and grandchildren,” said the zoo’s chief, Jesus Fernandez.

But while Snowflake may be gone, his legacy remains. In his time at the zoo, he fathered 21 gorillas, who have in turn given birth to 10 grandchildren, says Carme Mate, a primatologist in Barcelona who observed Snowflake for years. “The mothers were 3 females born in Equatorial Guinea, like Snowflake,” she says. “Their names were Ndengue, Bimbili, and Yuma. Ndengue was always his favorite, and Snowflake showed much distress after her death” a few years before his own.

Four of Snowflake’s children are still alive, Mate says. Three females, Kena, Machinda, and Virunga, live at the Barcelona Zoo. One male, Bindung, resides at the Fukuoka Zoological Garden in Japan. Nine grandchildren also survive, five of whom are still at the Barcelona Zoo. “Snowflake’s last grandchildren were born in August 2004,” says Mate. “Two are twins, male and female. This is a remarkable event, since the birth of twins is quite unusual in gorillas.”

None of Snowflake’s offspring, however, is albino (several of the grandchildren have had light patches on their hands or feet at birth, but they disappear with age). That’s because Snowflake’s albinism was the very rare product of a genetic coincidence: both his mother and his father had to carry a specific gene. Albino gorillas are rare for another reason: because the trait can make the animals more vulnerable to skin cancer (which ultimately killed Snowflake) and other health problems.

At the Barcelona Zoo, for instance, researchers who studied Snowflake learned that the gorilla had poor vision, due to a lack of pigment in his eyes. He often frowned in an attempt to protect his eyes from bright light. His vision problems appeared to reduce his coordination and confidence. In the wild, such difficulties might have prevented Snowflake from ever reproducing — or perhaps from surviving at all.

Today, researchers are studying Snowflake’s family to see how the famous gorilla’s genes have been handed down through the generations. They are also using his memory to sustain efforts to protect gorillas in the wild — and improve their lives in zoos. A Snowflake research fund, each year hands out grants to scientists interested in improving our understanding of gorillas.

It’s essential work. All three kinds of African wild gorillas — the western lowland gorilla, the eastern lowland gorilla, and the mountain gorilla — are in trouble. Researchers estimate that fewer than 10,000 remain in the wild, of which 9,000 are western lowland gorillas. Deforestation and hunting are the greatest threats.

In Barcelona, Snowflake’s memory lingers. The gorilla was “an unforgettable companion for our city, and we all feel regret at losing him,” the city’s mayor said. “He’s made a great contribution to his species by making the plight of gorillas more known, and the best thing we can do for him now is to continue that work.”

In 1967, local villagers in Africa’s Equitorial Guinea captured a remarkable baby gorilla. This young male was unlike any gorilla the villagers had seen before; instead of the thick brown fur of most gorillas, this baby had a coat of pure white. Through a series of fortunate circumstances, the rare white gorilla ended up at the Barcelona Zoo, where he became an international star. He was given the Spanish name Copito de Nieve and the English name Snowflake.

NATURE’s Snowflake: The White Gorilla tells the story of this remarkable animal, from his loving upbringing by humans to his eventual death from skin cancer in 2003. It also tracks the revolutionary changes in our understanding of how best to care for gorillas that have taken place during Snowflake’s lifetime.

Captive gorillas were once confined to solitary cells and fed meat. Today, some zoos spend millions constructing environments that are more in keeping with gorillas’ natural habitats, where the animals can live in groups as they do in the wild. We now know that gorillas are vegetarians and have adapted feeding practices accordingly. Since 1956, when the first baby gorilla was born in captivity at an Ohio zoo, zoos have developed new and better ways to nurture gorilla families.

Let NATURE’s Snowflake: The White Gorilla take you on a fascinating excursion into this remarkable world and introduce you to history’s only known albino gorilla.

Online content for Snowflake: The White Gorilla was originally posted February 2005.

Carol Buckley spent more than 20 years performing with her elephant, Tarra, in zoos and circuses before deciding the animals deserved a different life. In 1995, she and Scott Blais founded The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, an 800-acre preserve that is now home to seven retired circus and zoo elephants.

Carol Buckley spoke with NATURE about the sactuary:

What is the philosophy behind the sanctuary?

We employ “passive control” in managing our elephants. Passive control uses positive reinforcement, in the form of food treats, physical interaction, and verbal praise, in day-to-day elephant management. No weapon is ever used, no negative reinforcement administered. The elephants are asked only to perform behaviors necessary for medical or husbandry procedures — they are never asked to perform unnecessary tricks or behaviors. It is our experience that if elephants are not dominated and their basic needs are met — food, companionship, freedom of movement, and a sense of security — they are cooperative and nonaggressive.

You give sanctuary only to female elephants. Why?

The answer is simple. It is not natural for adult female and male Asian elephants to live together. Asian elephants are matriarchal by nature; they live in herds of related females and only very young nursing males. Young males, still dependent on their mother’s milk, remain in the matriarchal herd until they are completely weaned and exhibiting mock breeding behavior. Usually this is between 6 and 10 years of age, at which time the young male is forced to leave the herd. He quickly joins a group of other young males, but this arrangement is not permanent. Young males will change groups many times before they reach adulthood.

What is the thinking behind your no-visitors policy?

Here at the Sanctuary, we like to take our lead from the elephants themselves — which is why we are not open to the public, although computer users can take a tour on the World Wide Web, and we can arrange teleconferences for school children. When herds of unrelated wild elephants meet, they do not intermingle, nor do they touch one another.

Also, this fascination by the public to see elephants up-close and personal has resulted in disastrous consequences for captive elephants. As a direct result of the public’s desire to get closer, elephants live a miserable life: confined to small places, forced to submit to human dominance, fed only processed food due to restricted living space. Elephants deteriorate, both physically and emotionally, in an environment created to accommodate public interaction. If the only way that humans can know and enjoy the gentleness and spirituality of elephants is by interacting with them, then the species is doomed.

An urban elephant roams the streets of Bangkok, Thailand. On the streets of Bangkok and other large cities in Thailand, unemployed and homeless Asian elephants are becoming a common — and controversial — sight. While some of the animals are popular tourist attractions, with mahouts selling bananas or bags of food for a few cents to passers by, many are considered nuisances that threaten pedestrians and snarl traffic.

Many mahouts, however, say they have little choice but to bring their elephants to the big city. The spread of farm machinery and limits on logging have reduced the demand for elephant laborers, forcing the mahouts to find other ways to make a living during some seasons. One of the best options, they say, is using the elephant to attract donations along a busy city street.

An urban elephant roams the streets of Bangkok, Thailand.

Thai officials frown upon the practice, and have passed laws banning elephants from roadways. But the mahouts say the laws have little effect. “We know that walking elephants on the streets is illegal, but we have to, otherwise neither us nor the elephants would have anything to eat,” one told the BANGKOK POST a few years ago. Even the periodic fine isn’t enough to scare the mahouts away.

But life in the big city can be dangerous. Some elephants are hit by cars. Others are abused by children. And recently, the POST reported that one elephant broke its leg after stumbling into a storm drain. The accident dashed the hopes of the elephant’s mahout, who had hoped to make enough money parading the animal through the streets to pay off a debt. His dream dashed, he could only wait as his elephant’s leg healed in a local animal hospital.

An elephant jam. It’s not an uncommon sight on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, where Asian elephants are known to walk the streets, sometimes snarling traffic with their lumbering bulk. Drivers may curse and horns honk, but the elephant will not be hurried.

This week, NATURE takes a close look at The Urban Elephant, traveling from Bangkok’s crowded streets to the quiet forested hills of Tennessee to examine the close and often complicated relationships people have forged with these giant creatures. It tells the bittersweet stories of a few of the thousands of Asian elephants that live out their lives in captivity; in circuses, zoos, farms, and isolated forest logging camps.

Researchers believe that less than 40,000 endangered Asian elephants still survive in the wild, down from 1.5 million to 2 million in 1970. But there are thousands more Asian elephants living in captivity, since the animal has long been viewed as a prized captive. It is, for instance,a valued beast of burden in India and across Southeast Asia. For thousands of years, elephants have pulled plows, carried cargo, hauled lumber from forests, and ferried passengers across shallow rivers. Guided by expert elephant riders called “mahouts,” many Asians consider elephants to be the smart, rugged alternative to modern machines.

Elephants on city streets are a familiar sight in Bangkok.

But not all Asian elephants still live in their homelands. As early as 1796, resourceful traders began shipping the animals to Europe and North America, where they became celebrated curiosities. By the 19th century, Asian elephants were a staple of zoos and traveling circuses. Again, the animals’ intelligence and staying power proved prized; circus trainers, for instance, could train a young elephant to perform amazingly agile moves, knowing it might be able to occupy the spotlight for much of its 60-year life span. Some of the circus elephants featured on NATURE’s The Urban Elephant, for instance, have been performing since the late 1940s.

But some former circus trainers believe performing elephants deserve a different life. As The Urban Elephant shows, they have set up sanctuaries — such as The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee — where the one-time big-top stars can retire and live quietly alongside others of their kind.

Similarly, in Sri Lanka, conservationists are working to create better lives for that nation’s elephants. In addition to working to protect wild habitat, they have created the Pinnawala Orphanage, featured on The Urban Elephant. It was founded in 1975 to take care of the many baby elephants found orphaned in the forest after their mothers died, or who were captured or killed. It also takes in captive elephants that have been mistreated by their owners, or wild elephants that have run afoul of expanding human communities, outcast because they have trampled crops or attacked farmers.

In Canada and the United States, however, zoo officials face a different problem: a shortage of baby elephants. Because Asian elephants do not easily breed in zoos, captive populations have been dwindling.

If nothing changes, the population will be gone within 50 years, experts estimate. So, with most zoos unwilling to obtain or barred from capturing new animals from the wild, they are taking increasingly sophisticated steps to maintain their herds. At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., for instance, researchers have successfully pioneered the use of artificial means to impregnate their female elephants. Soon, “test tube” elephants could become routine, and even help restock animals into the wild.

That day is still far off. Meanwhile, at Canada’s African Lion Safari, caretakers have had remarkable success getting their group of 11 Asian elephants, which includes 3 males, to breed without special assistance. Since 1985, the animal park has welcomed 7 baby Asian elephants. That record is especially impressive because each pregnancy lasts nearly two years, meaning that growing a herd is a slow and arduous task. But elephant program director Charlie Gray says the waiting is worth it, since the breeding program is improving our understanding of elephants. Working with researchers at the University of Guelph, for instance, African Lion Safari has helped develop tests that can pinpoint when a female elephant is ready to breed.

Understanding such intimate details may eventually help people live in harmony with the endangered Asian elephant. As NATURE’s The Urban Elephant shows, these remarkable animals long ago learned to adapt to the sometimes cruel demands of people. Now, perhaps, we can return the favor by helping these proud animals reclaim their wild heritage.

NATURE explores the unusual problems created as the struggle to give Asian elephants a home is fought worldwide.

They have a history of captivity that stretches over 200 years. They participate with humans in a surprising array of professions, including tourism, construction, and performance. And their gigantic footsteps may disappear from the face of the earth.

The enigmatic subjects of NATURE: The Urban Elephant, Asian elephants are losing territory to the inevitable process of deforestation. Industrialization all over Asia has hurt the mahouts, or elephant drivers, so that the trained elephants and their riders are being driven into major cities such as Bangkok to earn a meager living receiving donations and food from curious tourists.

Elephants forced into a captive life suffer emotionally, physically, and as a species. In “Safe Haven” one woman explains why created a santuary for retired performing elephants after giving up her own circus career.

Join The Urban Elephant’s trunk-raising salute to these talented, intelligent, and troubled creatures that we have just begun to understand.

To order a copy of The Urban Elephant, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for The Urban Elephant was originally posted November 2000.