Publisher's Synopsis
An excoriating investigation into how zoos have comprehensively failed in their claimed ambitions to augment rare or endangered species using 'captive breeding programmes'. This radical insight exposes how the oft-repeated concept of taking the last animals from the wild to breed them in captivity has been used to justify a lucrative industry in the export from wild Africa, and elsewhere, of the young of seriously endangered wild animals, involving the casual deaths of horrifying numbers of them, plus the deliberate slaughter of their parents, to supply the demands of so-called 'captive breeding programmes'.
"Tainted Blood" then exposes the fatal flaws in zoo priorities, leading to sloppy and half-hearted management of such rare or endangered animals, long-standing and unjustifiable failures in their breeding potential and the redirection of resources and finances towards the enhancement of exhibits, rather than towards genuine efforts to replace the devastated wild populations that were relentlessly hunted down for their original stock. The author outlines how outrageous decisions and husbandry failures have led inevitably to genetic bottlenecks which have undermined the integrity of those captive animals, now generations down the line, rendering them semi-domesticated creatures, unprepared genetically, immunologically or psychologically, for life in the wild.
Serious doubts are also raised about the genetic purity of some of the most endangered ungulates on our planet - Eastern Mountain bongo, Przewalski's horse, Roan and Sable antelope, Scimitar-Horned oryx and Dama gazelle to name a few, which may have entered the zoo world as 'pure' species but have since been hybridised carelessly and often intentionally, leading to the creation of mongrels - the tainted blood of captive breeding.
