The death this year of Harambe, the Cincinnati Zoo’s western lowland silverback gorilla, continues to inflame online passions, spur the creation of viral memes and provide fodder for anti-zoo commentary. Estimates of the number of gorillas killed illegally in the region run from a low of 400, to a high of 4,500 a year. Whether one agrees with their existence — and 12 million people visit accredited zoos in Canada alone every year — zoos help create proximity and familiarity with exotic and distant animals. In Mencken’s time, zoos were reflections of a now-vanished world where wild animals were still plentiful and living in ecologically robust habitats. Today, zoos exist as bridges to an increasingly fragile natural environment.

Source: National Post September 01, 2016 19:41 UTC