Exklusivly for zoos.media – 02.02.2021. Author: Philipp J. Kroiss
The decision of the French Parliament against dolphins in human care is wrong and was made on the basis of lies and misinformation by the animal rights industry.
France: Parliament bans comprehensive whale conservation
The IUCN developed the so-called One Plan Approach that combines projects in situ and ex situ to comprehensive conservation. Thanks to this combination of projects in the habitat and in zoological institutions several species could already been saved from extinction. Different dolphin species and sub populations are in risk of extinction and dolphin husbandry is planned to prevent the extinction of these populations.
The French parliament now voted to make comprehensive dolphin conservation impossible in France. The senate still has to approve that but the parliament already caved into misinformation of the animal rights industry.
Populism instead of conservation politics
The campaign against dolphin husbandry in France was designed to emotionally grab people to believe the lies of the animal rights extremists and ignore the expertise of the scientists, researchers, and more experts really working with these animals. It’s a victory of fake news against true facts that was made possible by questionable politicians.
It weakens France as a conservation location and ignores science. Bottlenose dolphins, the most common species of dolphins in the world or zoos and aquariums, are healthier, less stressed and also live longer than their wild counterparts in accredited zoos and aquariums. They also pour out happiness hormones during training and look forward to interacting with the trainers.
Will such decisions stop dolphin husbandry?
Animal rights activists promote these weakening of conservation because they lie to the politicians that they would be something like a pioneer in banning dolphin husbandry all over the world. This is not going to happen because, for example, Asia will never stop that. There, unaccredited zoos and aquariums are still catching animals from the wild. In Europe, accredited zoos and aquariums are working to stop this practice by breeding and cooperating to enable a change to the better there.
Weakening so-called Western zoos and aquariums by these decisions will only increase the real problems of dolphins and other whales in the wild. Accredited zoos, aquariums, and dolphinariums are important for research, education, and conservation. They are part of the solution not the problem. Same as in other species, bad husbandries are the problem.
Ironically, the same animal rights activists, misinforming public and politics on dolphins in human care, are promoting and greenwashing bad husbandries sometimes even called sanctuaries. They want to open their own greenwashed bad husbandries to make money instead of benefiting conservation, research, and education like the good husbandries in zoos and aquariums do. Their activism is all about implementing a dangerous business model threatening conservation.
More videos
These two videos provide great information on why trustworthy conservation organizations like Yaqu Pacha cooperate with trustworthy dolphinarium and what they can do to benefit conservation directly.
In both videos, English subtitles are available.
