Thereâs a lot to unpack about the fact that the American Zoo & Aquarium Associationâs (AZA) new President and CEO Dan Ashe decided to invite the President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Wayne Pacelle, to give the keynote speech at the 2017 AZA national conference this fall. Weâre going to start with what is probably the most distressing part of the entire thing: the fact that the ramifications of this choice have the potential to destroy the very fragile cohesion that exists between the already fractured zoo industry. In time, the fallout from that schism might lead to the end of zoological institutions in the United States.Â
If that sounds alarmist, consider this: the zoo world is already feeling a huge amount of pressure from animal rights groups who are campaigning to shut them down and is seriously struggling to overcome internal division and fight for its existence in any effective way. Thatâs while people from different organizations and practices can at least still agree on a common goal. Bringing Pacelle - someone most people in the zoo field utterly distrust - to speak officially at AZA will do such damage to AZAâs relationships with other parts of the zoo world that future collaboration on any topic may be entirely off the table.
To understand why Iâm so genuinely worried about the potential fallout from this one dudeâs speech at a conference, youâll want to have some context for the political situation this is creating. Iâve talked about it in other posts on the blog before, but in case youâre new to this, hereâs a quick synopsis of a couple decades of politics:
First, the Humane Society of the United States is not associated with your local humane society or animal shelter - itâs a huge animal rights organization that is basically PETA but with better PR and an affection for legislative action instead of shock-and-awe campaigns. During a panel I attended at the 2016 AZA conference, an HSUS surrogate stated openly in response to a question that HSUS and PETA advocate for the same issues and end goals and are mainly differentiated by the tactics they utilize to achieve them.Â
Second, HSUS has never truly been supportive of the existence of the zoo industry, with organizational action running the gamut from the support of âhumane zoosâ run by the AZA in the 1970s to a frustrated declaration in the early 1990s that many zoos - even those that were committed to the conservation of endangered species - needed to close permanently. HSUS has long been involved in and supported attacks on zoos from other animal rights organizations: in the early 2000s HSUS activists took part in campaigns to remove elephants from AZA zoos all over the country, and in in 2013 they were overwhelmingly supportive of the contentious documentary Blackfish and wanted to use it to help end all marine mammal captivity (including in AZA zoos). The current position statement on the HSUS website regarding zoos make it clear that they do not support the current structure of zoos and their conservation programs - the organization wants to see zoos âact as sanctuaries for animals in need rather than breeding them.â
Third, HSUS has a history of shady behavior, including: having their lawsuit against Ringling thrown out of court after it was discovered the key witness in the case had been paid to testify and had lied under oath; making an agreement with the Ohio Farm Bureau in which HSUS promised not to push for tighter animal welfare regulations for farm animals if the state of Ohio helped crack down on exotic pets - including a clause that allowed HSUS to pursue the very ballot initiatives against agriculture groups if they felt recommendations they made regarding dangerous wild animals were not being implemented appropriately; and suing the Oklahoma Attorney Generalâs Office for harassment after refusing to comply with multiple requests for the organizationâs fundraising records for an audit. Â
Fourth, a partnership between HSUS and AZA facilities has appeared to be developing during recent years, a trend on which AZA leadership has pretty much declined to comment, leaving many zoo staffers highly uneasy. Trade organizations are supposed to protect the interests of their members and some in the zoo field have expressed the sentiment that collusion with a group viewed as the enemy - especially without any explanation - is inappropriate and unwanted.
Lastly, HSUS has implemented even harsher attacks on non-AZA facilities during their burgeoning partnership - campaigning for government agencies to shut down all unaccredited zoos, writing legislation to protect exotic animals that proposes to regulate any non-AZA facility out of existence, and actively condemning alternate accrediting groups and any facilities they list on their membership rolls.
Needless to say, thereâs not a lot of love for HSUS from people who work in the zoo field. Most people who work at zoos did not start out with jobs at AZA institutions, and remember well the treatment their previous employers received from HSUS and their cohort. Many have worked at zoos that HSUS has defamed or sued, or have friends and colleagues at such facilities. Â
All this history sets us up for the really important point weâre at now: AZA leadership has made the decision to have Pacelle represent the zoo industry in the eyes of the public by having him give the keynote at the organizationâs national conference⊠when the majority of their membership body does not support the actions or goals of HSUS.
I predict this leading to two irreversible major schisms that will redraw the entire political landscape of the zoo industry.
Conflict #1: AZA vs literally everyone else involved in the zoo industry.
The first big political schism has already been in motion for years and will simply be expedited and cemented by Pacelleâs keynote address: a divide between AZA and the rest of the zoo field.
In a sense, this divide has always existed, as AZA has been trying to get rid of non-AZA facilities since the organization incorporated in the 1970s. When they couldnât convince congress to legislate other zoos out of existence, they created their accreditation standards to differentiate AZAâs standard of care from the rest of the industry and used that credibility to deflect animal protectionism criticisms of inhumane treatment onto âthe other guys.â While these disagreements used to be cordial in nature, enmity between AZA and rest of the industry has grown in recent years, with AZA actively joining animal rights groups in lambasting the other main zoo accrediting group, the Zoological Association of America (ZAA), and unaccredited âroadsideâ zoos. During a panel at the 2016 AZA conference, the AZA moderator joined an HSUS surrogate in decrying the validity of ZAAâs existence to a room full of conference attendees, only to be unable to define the purpose of the ZAA or provide any real information about the organization when questioned. This rhetoric can be viewed as both overly-aggressive and short-sighted, as there are a number of stellar zoos that are accredited both by AZA and ZAA, and ZAA-accredited facilities contribute significantly to the success of some of AZAâs conservation breeding programs.
As discussed recently on this blog, there are a number of reasons a good zoo might choose not to pursue AZA accreditation - and the behavior of AZA towards facilities external to their accreditation is absolutely one of them. As the apparent partnership between HSUS and AZA has evolved in recent years, AZA rhetoric about ZAA and unaccredited facilities has begun to mirror the messaging of the animal rights movement. This is really upsetting to a lot of people in the zoo field, as most zookeepers and other zoo staff donât start their careers at prestigious AZA institutions - they started wherever they can get a volunteer gig or an internship and worked their way up to whatever job they have now. So, in calling for all unaccredited zoos to be shut down or decrying ZAAâs animal care standards, AZA leadership has been lambasting the friends, coworkers, and mentors of their own zoo employees. Slowly but surely the larger zoo community has started to be alienated by this exclusionary behavior by AZAâs management, and non-AZA facilities and staff have become increasingly reluctant to partner with an organization that will simultaneously accept their labor and publicly trash their facilities.
Bringing Pacelle in for the keynote at the 2017 conference - a position offered as an honor to the selected presenter, and whose presentation sets the tone for entire meeting - will cement the impression that AZA is aligning with the animal rights movement against the rest of the industry. This move makes it seem pretty likely that AZA will now be partnering with HSUS in exactly the way Pacelle described months ago in a blog post: â[working] to expose these bad actors, to pass meaningful legislation to help all animals, to educate the public about the wide set of animal welfare issues, and to blow the lid off phony accreditation programs that have little meaning or value.â (AZA management did not respond to an email looking to ascertain if Pacelleâs statement was an accurate characterization of their partnership, and has made no public statement regarding any collaboration with HSUS that Iâm aware of as of the writing of this post.) This allegiance starts, apparently, by giving HSUS the top billing at their national conference in order to gain AZA credibility in the eyes of the animal rights movement. Itâll be to the detriment of the other sectors of the zoo world, but AZAâs previous behavior has indicated that their management is willing to throw other organizations under the bus in order to survive the onslaught of animal rights attacks. Anyone not part of an AZA institution - or even those working for an AZA facility who owe their careers to a non-AZA job or mentor - are going to have a really hard time justifying their support of that move.
Conflict #2: Actual zookeepers vs AZAâs chosen representatives
The second schism Iâm expecting isnât written on the wall as clearly as the first, but has the potential to be a lot more messy.
It sounds like Pacelleâs keynote will be on the topic of animal welfare - which makes sense, given his decade-long reciprocal relationship with the Detroit Zooâs Center for Zoo Animal Welfare and the fact that the Detroit Zoo has an unusually large presence on the conference schedule this year. At first blush, youâd think thatâs a good thing, because the need for high-quality animal welfare is something that both animal activists and animal caretakers should be able to agree on.
The problem is that HSUS has a really spotty history when it comes to both assessing and providing appropriate welfare for the animals under their purview. HSUS was a prominent engineer in the orca Keikoâs release in 2002, and Pacelleâs latest book represents the transfer as a success because â[he] had been given a fuller, richer, and more natural taste of life as a free orcaâ - however, reports indicate that once freed, Keiko was unable to integrate into pods he encountered, solicited attention from boats and humans, and died from pneumonia after less than a year and half in the wild. In the mid 1990s, an HSUS-backed attempt to rehabilitate navy dolphins - one that eschewed the input from the only zoo scientists known to have facilitated successful dolphin releases - resulted in two injured, underweight dolphins and the leads of the project being tried for seven violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In both of these examples, the noticeable pattern is that HSUS chose to work with activists who had no scientific background or animal management training instead of the appropriate experts - to the detriment of the animals involved.
Pacelle has been involved with the Center for Zoo Animal Welfare (CZAW) at the Detroit Zoo since 2011, but some of actions of CZAW also raise serious questions about the extent of their credibility as a pro-zoo organization. For instance, advisory committee members include representatives from multiple animal rights organizations known to be anti-zoo (including the Performing Animal Welfare Society, known for petitioning for zoo elephants to be sent to their sanctuary); a director who made waves for attending an animal law symposium composed almost entirely of animal rights advocates; and a history of hosting very exclusive invite-only symposiums to which both HSUS and PETA representatives have been in regular attendance. Most concerning, though, is that an attendee at CZAWâs 2017 symposium reported that the first day was spent putting zoos on the defensive, forcing them to justify their right to exist to the animal rights organization representatives in their midst. That was a meeting held at a zoo with a facility specifically dedicated to animal welfare research, by a pro-welfare organization that has existed for almost a decade, with the purpose of creating âprocesses to safeguard the well-being of animals and fundamental animal welfare policy for zoos and aquariums developed to ensure all animals are able to thriveâ ⊠and theyâre still having to debate that zoos should even exist with the leaders in the field who were hand-picked to attend? Something about that dynamic just doesnât feel right. Detroit Zoo is participating in number of sessions related to animal welfare at AZA 2017, however, so no matter how weird their operations appear externally theyâve got the support of AZA management.
AZA is struggling under the onslaught of animal rights attacks right now - the pressure on them can be assessed by simply counting the number of accredited zoos fighting against AR campaigns that want to confiscate their elephants - and is likely aligning with HSUS in an attempt to regain some public confidence in the quality of their animal care. Itâs likely that, given the heavy presence of the Detroit Zoo on the 2017 conference schedule, Pacelle will be speaking about animal welfare - specifically about his desire for HSUS and AZA to collaborate to ensure that âgood zoosâ become part of the âhumane economyâ Pacelle promotes. However, when HSUS has previously decided to compromise with an organization it has been publicly attacking, that offer has always come with strings attached. In order for Seaworld to get the public support of HSUS, CEO Joel Manby had to agree to retire the orca breeding program. The Ohio Farm Bureau had to agree to support legislation restricting exotic animal ownership in order for HSUS to stop pushing bills forcing more welfare regulations for farm animals. What will AZA have to give HSUS to gain their public stamp of approval? Itâs probable that, like Seaworld, AZA will have to capitulate on some topic important to the animal rights movement. Pacelleâs most recent book hints at what those priority topics might be - mainly, the cessation of all elephant and marine mammal captivity. It would not be surprising if Pacelle eventually pushes publicly for AZA to, on the basis of improved animal welfare, either send all their elephants to sanctuaries run by animal rights organizations or cease marine mammal exhibition entirely.Â
This creates a situation with a lot of potential for conflict between the opinions of the zoo staff who actually work with animals and the authorities on welfare their trade organization has decided to publicly support. When Seaworld decided to partner with HSUS, staffers were livid - and that was just the choice to stop a breeding program. If Pacelle and HSUS - distrusted outsiders without actual exotic animal experience - attempt to force major changes to the ways zoos manage their animals without actual evidence that it improves animal welfare, there would be a massive amount of resistance from the animal care staff at AZA accredited institutions. Any suggestion of ending conservation breeding programs and transferring zoo residents to sanctuaries would cause internal turmoil. AZA management has previously attempted to punish zoos that disagreed with new regulations handed down by threatening to withdraw their accreditation - and the grants and federal exemptions for a facility that accreditation ensures - and might continue to utilize that tactic in such an instance. Thereâs already a precedent for zoos purposefully splitting from AZA over just such a disagreement (the Pittsburgh Zoo forfeited AZA accreditation in 2015 over new protected-contact elephant management requirements) and if AZA allows Pacelle to influence new welfare-based animal care regulations it is likely to cause such a divide that staff - and potentially even entire zoos - will choose to terminate their relationship with the trade group.
Tl;dr: How things evolve around Pacelleâs keynote at AZA is incredibly important, because it has the potential to be so divisive as to permanently alter AZAâs relationship with rest of the zoo industry. The choice to feature him is already alienating a lot of people just by the fact that it aligns the trade organization - and therefore the facilities they accredit - with an animal rights organization that has historically opposed the many of the basic objectives of zoos in such a public and positive manner. If the HSUS presence causes the maximum amount of potential fallout Iâm expecting, it could very leave the animal management field so scattered and at-odds with each other that animal rights organizations will easily make zoological institutions and their conversations programs as we know them today extinct. Â
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