Can a zoo be ethical? These institutions are trying to prove it

Stand-offs before school aren’t unknown in my household. But the cause of the disagreement with my 10-year-old caught me by surprise: a class outing to the zoo had been planned — and she didn’t want to go. Setting aside the fact that, in my day, I’d have toured a waste-management facility if it meant dodging double maths, I quizzed her about the cause of her reluctance. “They’re cruel,” she said. For all the advances that zoos as a whole — and a number to a striking degree — have undergone in recent decades, negative connotations still linger.

It’s perhaps not surprising. The earliest zoos, which became common across Europe in the 19th century, were grim affairs, with creatures held in iron cages or barred pits and often goaded into aggression by staff and visitors. Their successors evolved with changing public sensibilities but, all too often, outright cruelty simply gave way to a more insidious variety: cramped enclosures, poor diet and a brazen disregard for psychological welfare. And, while some zoos may sadly still be like this, slowly this has begun to change.

Jersey Zoo is an entirely different animal. Modelled around the philosophy of its pioneering founder, Gerald Durrell, it opened in 1959 with a focus on the strategic conservation of endangered species rather than simply the display of animals.

Set in 32 acres of parkland, the zoo has spacious, naturalistic enclosures. Its conservation work spans everything from captive breeding of at-risk species such as lesser night geckos and pink pigeons for reintroduction to the wild, to training conservationists through its academies. It also helps to restore fragile ecosystems as far afield as the Galápagos Islands and the Brazilian rainforest.

However an institution chooses to badge itself, its ethical credentials rest on three demonstrable priorities, according to Jersey Zoo director of operations Mark Habben: “Having a clear conservation focus, a clear research focus and clearly defined welfare goals and assessments for the animals.”

All are embraced by Chester Zoo, one of the UK’s largest. It had nearly 2.14 million visitors in 2025 — the highest in its 94-year history. It was vindication, the zoo believes, of its conservation and welfare-centric approach. Its 22-acre Heart of Africa experience showcases the work of its projects across central and East Africa, protecting species in the wild such as the giant pangolin — the world’s most trafficked mammal — and eastern bongo, a forest-dwelling antelope. And its conservation breeding programme has yielded chicks of the Socorro dove, a bird declared extinct in the wild in the 1970s, as well as a snow leopard cub.

Such so-called ‘insurance populations’, with zoos around the world collaborating to ensure the widest possible gene pools, have become an increasingly vital role in our age of rampant poaching, hunting and habitat loss. All three factors pushed the Arabian oryx, once plentiful across the Arabian peninsula, to an extinction-in-the-wild classification in the early 1970s. Yet today — following a successful captive breeding programme encompassing zoos such as Phoenix, San Diego and London — there are thousands in the wild or in managed populations, and the species has been downgraded to ‘vulnerable’.

The Arabian oryx is seen as an exemplar of zoo-assisted recovery and reintroduction, alongside the California condor. Just 22 of these giants, whose wingspans can reach three metres, were left in the wild in 1982, with lead poisoning from hunters’ bullets and collisions with power cables posing a critical threat. A coordinated breeding programme involving San Diego and Los Angeles zoos has boosted that figure to several hundred today, spread across areas such as Zion and Grand Canyon national parks.

Both case studies are illustrative of an uncomfortable truth: where once zoo enclosures protected humans from animals, they must sometimes do the reverse. “A lot of people still think zoos aren’t great because animals aren’t in the wild,” says animal ethicist Samantha Ward of Nottingham Trent University. “But the truth is, the wild is no longer this place where animals roam free and it’s all happy and wonderful.”

Professor Ward works with zoos to improve animal welfare conditions; primarily ensuring that creatures have the space, environment and mental stimuli to not just survive but thrive. She’s also involved in the shaping of legislation. Much of Europe, under the EU Zoos Directive, and the UK under its equally comprehensive Zoo Licensing Act, are subject to stringent regulation governing everything from housing and veterinary care to the display of information about species and the threats they face in the wild.

But standards of national legislation vary wildly. It’s why such store is set by accreditation bodies like WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) and its American, European and British equivalents: AZA, EAZA and BIAZA. Yes, it’s a bit of an alphabet soup, confesses Ward. But “if you’re going off the beaten track and particularly to parts of Asia where animal welfare is generally known to be pretty poor, looking for such accreditation is the best thing you can do”.

With an estimated 700 million annual zoo visitors worldwide, the value of these institutions in fostering curiosity and driving education is considerable. A 2024 study by Sheffield University, collating 50 pieces of research in nearly 40 zoos and aquariums across the world, found that departing visitors felt more positive about conservation. They were better informed and more likely to take action to protect species and their habitats — such as supporting wildlife charities or shopping for more sustainable products.

Shaldon Wildlife Trust in Devon bills itself as the ‘small zoo making a big difference’. Its animals are primarily endangered species held as part of managed breeding programmes, such as South American primate the yellow-breasted capuchin, which has lost over 80% of its population in the past 50 years.

Director Zak Showell says he understands the reticence that may be felt regarding visiting zoos. But he adds that, in part due to the work of organisations such as EAZA and AZA, standards today are “much, much higher than the vast majority of the public are aware of”. And with zoos collectively serving as one of the largest funders of species conservation in the world, it’s critical potential visitors are persuaded of their merits.

“We have that very difficult balancing act of being successful businesses to ensure we generate enough revenue to deliver on our conservation, education and research aims,” says Showell. He adds that doubters should “come, ask us questions and scrutinise the work we’re doing”.

My daughter ended up doing just that — and returned from her school trip newly enthused. That’s the power of what Professor Ward calls ‘progressive zoos’. “These are the ones using the knowledge they’ve gained to constantly develop their captive spaces, contributing towards conservation programmes, and helping with species preservation in the wild,” the professor explains. “If they’re getting all that right, then they’re good, progressive zoos and I think they’re definitely worth defending.”