captive breeding and release

• Captive breeding:

  • Controlled environment to achieve best possible chance for survival of offspring
  • Increase the population for later release
  • Insurance against extinction
• In situ conservation - in natural environment (place) like a nature reserve
• Ex-situ conservation - in a separate location like a zoo.

  • Secure
  • Controlled
  • Accessible to public to raise money and awareness
• Keeping in captivity:

  • Wild animals are not domestic
  • If done badly loss of valuable animals
• To make a successful captive breeding program:

  • Appropriate habitat size
  • Food requirements
  • Species interrelationships, whether species are interdependent
  • Cost of requirements
• one challenge to captive breeding is the preparation, eg body fat, daylight and temperature. a solution is to study the species in detail. an example of a species is a panda.
• a second challenge is the relationships, family groups and individuals are unique. a solution is to study the species and decide whether it belongs in a large group or is an individual
• a third challenge is the habitat for breeding, the like a nest site. studying the species will control the enclosure and environment for breeding. for example flamingos require a large flock, so mirrors are placed in enclosures
• the fourth challenge is the level of genetic diversity, captive populations tend to have a low genetic diversity and the long term survival requires a large genetic diversity, subspecies may interbreed to make hybrids. zoos keep stud books to monitor relations and carefully control subspecies.
• in case of death of an individual of species, cryopreservation freezes sperm and egg cells for future use.
• artificial insemination is used to transfer genetics without moving the whole animal, useful if the species is large or dangerous.
• embryo transfer increases the reproductive rate of a species if there are few offspring born.
• cloning is the process of creating genetically identical copies of an organism like plants in case one individual remains.
• Release population

  Solitary animal - release in small groups

  Herd/flock animal - release in large groups

  Genetic variation

  Great bustard - flock living bird (protection) critical mass
• Release site

  Large enough area

  Is there enough food/water/shelter?

  Protected sites

  Local support

  Predation? Introduced predators

  Kakapos in New Zealand - flightless and breed slowly, no defence against predators introduced by Europeans
• Release support

  Innate ability/skills to survive

  Learnt skills passed on by parents

  Soft release - lots of post release support

  Hard release - no post release support (innate skills)

  Ape jungle schools - jungle survival skills
• Release monitoring

  Mark/capture/release

  Monitor population change

  Identify feeding/breeding/migration areas

  Californian condor
• Seed banks:

  • Seeds are good genetic stores
  • Exploit to store genetic plant diversity long term
  • Kew gardens millennium seed bank
  • Svalbard international seed bank
  • All nations can contribute crop seeds, crop relatives and wild seeds
  • Limited genetic variety due to small samples
  • Not all seeds are viable after storage