Wild No More

Until I came to Bangkok this year, I hadn’t stepped foot in a zoo for years. I remember the zoo as a youngster. It was a place of exciting and exotic animals.

Early this year I decided to visit the zoo in Bangkok. It was depressing. Having been around wildlife in both Antarctica (penguins, seals and whales) and the Arctic (polar bears, seals, whales and foxes), I find the zoo experience to be anything but about the animal.

Yesterday I spent the morning at Chiang Mai zoo, in northern Thailand. As a photographer you can’t help but observe things and one of the things I realised is that too many people visiting Chiang Mai zoo, think it is an amusement park. People talk loudly in proximity to the animals and too many people tap on the glass, when there are signs saying ‘please do not tap on the glass’.

My favourite was watching an open-air zoo bus pull up at the Asiatic Bear compound. The people on the bus didn’t even bother to get out. They simply pointed their camera in the right direction, took some photos and then they were off. Total visit time: 45-seconds.

Now before you fill my inbox with hate mail and remind me of all the good things zoos do for animals, let me just clarify the point of this post.

In the Arctic, the name of the game with a wildlife encounter is to minimise disturbance to the animal. This over-rides people’s agendas. And this is a good thing. In zoos though, wild animals are locked up in small spaces and put on show to visitors. Some visitors – and I do mean some – just don’t understand or take the time to think or even care that what they are looking at is a wild animal.

That’s a pity. If we are to lock animals up in the name of preservation, then the least we can do is treat them a little bit better.

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