Environment: Zoo Story

However much they have delighted generations of small children, zoos have always had something of a villainous image among animal lovers. Intentionally or unintentionally, they were in reality prisons—clinical cubicles where hundreds of other species spent their lives pacing behind bars. Zoos might also have been predators of a sort, since they sought rare animals and thus often contributed to the depletion of some species. Now this image is changing. Thanks to the environmentalist concern over vanishing wildlife, many zoos have become latter-day Noah's arks, where rare wild animals are protected and bred against the day they may vanish from their...