An Emerging Role of Zoos to Conserve Biodiversity
Abstract
At the October 2010 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, delegates discussed a plan to reduce pressures on the planet's biodiversity. Key targets include expanding coverage of protected areas, halving the rate of loss of natural habitats, and preventing extinction of threatened species (1). For species whose habitat is severely threatened, however, the outlook is so bleak that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and the CBD (Article 9) recognize that in situ conservation actions (i.e., in the species' natural habitat) will need to be combined with ex situ approaches, such as captive breeding in zoos, aquariums, and so on (2, 3).
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References and Notes
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ISIS and IUCN information were matched on the species level using the Catalogue of Life (F. A. Bisby et al., Eds.); www.catalogueoflife.org.
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Threatened species are those listed as Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), or Vulnerable (VU) by IUCN.
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Science
Volume 331 | Issue 6023
18 March 2011
18 March 2011
Copyright
Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Published in print: 18 March 2011
Acknowledgments
We thank J. Vaupel, M. Gusset, C. D. L. Orme, D. Levitis, D. de Man, W. van Lint, K. Zippel, S. Möller, J. Runge, E. Brinks, G. Fiedler, P. Kutter, and F. Quade. We also thank three anonymous referees.
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