What might be involved in reintroducing captive-reared / captive bred large carnivores into the wild? What roles might operant conditioning and conditioned flavour aversion have to play in this process? Is there a way to do this involving three generations of these carnivores? What are some of the dangers involved? What about Christian the lion, ‘Born free’, and the work of the Adamsons?
What follows is a copy of an article on reintroducing captive-reared large carnivores into the wild which appeared in the Times of India, 9.11.2011
Source: “http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-11-09/nagpur/30377108_1_white-paper-big-cats-bor-sanctuary”
Followed by my response to it
Times of India
White paper seeks ban on reintroduction of captive carnivores
Vijay Pinjarkar Nov 9, 2011, 04.52AM IST
NAGPUR: The romance of raising orphaned tiger or leopard cubs in captivity and ‘returning them to nature’ is apparently irresistible to many NGOs, activists and officials. However, the latest white paper by Conservation India urges a total and immediate ban on this needless and dangerous practice.
The white paper – ‘Killer Cats: The dangers of captive carnivore introductions’ – by wildlife and conservation film-maker Shekar Dattatri has made a well-researched case against this questionable practice, which puts both big cats and human lives at risk.
Dattatri, a former member of National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), traces the genesis of these ‘feel good’ experiments to Africa in the 1950s. He shows how virtually all such attempts have been driven by sentimental considerations, rather than an understanding of ecology or conservation.
Talking to TOI, Dattatri suggests that such introductions not only lack scientific justification, but also fly against common sense. He has urged a total and immediate ban on this needless, dangerous and growing practice.
The desire to return captivity raised big cats to the wild probably stems from a romantic misinterpretation of wildlife conservation. There is a need to better understand this ‘feel good’ fad, which is currently sweeping through India, says Dattatri.
On the dangers of reintroducing orphaned cubs, Dattatri says whichever way you look at it, releasing captive-raised big cats into the wild is irresponsible. To learn how to survive, cubs undergo an 18 to 24 months apprenticeship under their mother’s tutelage.
The white paper states that despite this about half don’t make it to adulthood, succumbing to hunger, disease, natural calamities or aggression from other big cats. The challenges are even greater for cubs raised by human surrogate parents.
The white paper also warns against reintroduction of the three orphaned tiger cubs kept in Bor sanctuary. It states that the government’s idea of shifting the three tigers to a four-hectare ‘halfway house’ enclosure in Pench and driving prey into it for them to kill, is bound to run into a number of ethical and practical problems, which it apparently has not foreseen.
Big cats enclosed in a small area with their prey are likely to go on a predatory rampage, killing more than required. The panicked herbivores will probably injure themselves on the fence in droves.
Officials will end up releasing the tigers post-haste into the wild, with all parties washing their hands of the matter. Sooner or later, the tigers will start killing livestock or people, and will either be poisoned by local people or will have to be shot or recaptured.
On the issue, principal secretary (forests) Praveen Pardeshi says he is aware of the dangers of human-reared cubs being reintroduced in the wild.
“Absence of training from the mother on how to avoid humans is absolutely necessary. The only permission from NTCA-WII is to move them to a large enclosure of 7 hectares in Pench and not to release them,” Pardeshi said.
My response:
Sir/Madam,
I partially agree with the sentiments expressed in your article ‘White paper seeks ban on reintroduction of captive carnivores’ (Times of India, 9.11.2011). Laudable as it may be in some ways to wish to reintroduce captive-reared predators into the wild, there certainly is a strongly romantic flavour to the idea of, spiced as it is by naïve ideas, and brought to a simmer by the heat of misplaced and uninformed, sentimentality, no doubt with strains of ‘Born free’ playing in the background, whilst Christian the lion looks on from the wings.
Partly, I suspect, this stems from a fundamental lack of knowledge about what conservation actually means; it’s not about keeping individual members of a species alive – a task which with exceptions, zoos do reasonably well – so much as it is about preserving entire ecosystems intact in such a manner that they can be self-regulating and self-sustaining in the natural manner in which they have been doing since life first evolved on this planet of ours.
It is also true that such efforts are mostly not based upon careful consideration or any proper scientific research, and are driven instead by sentiment. That having been said however, there is one possibility which I would like to raise here: I believe that it is possible to successfully reintroduce captive-bred predators into the wild if one could make it a three-step process, with the caveat that much study needs to be done on what I am about to propose, and with the clear understanding that it would be a very expensive undertaking indeed.
What I would like to propose is that we use one group of animals, the 1st generation, at least a portion of which have been wild-caught for carefully controlled, and genetically monitored breeding. We then take the off-spring of these animals, the 2nd generation, hand raise them, teach them how to hunt – which is possible, but extremely labour-intensive, keeping in mind that it typically takes more than a year and a half for large carnivores to learn to hunt at their mothers’ knees – then set them up in very large, game-stocked enclosures wherein they could hunt for themselves and also breed. It is imperative to note that we would have to be very careful here since any predators enclosed in a confined space with prey are likely to go on a predatory rampage and kill more than they can eat (what is known as the fox in the chicken-coop phenomenon). Finally, if we could then ensure that these 3rd generation cubs had no contact with humans at all, and learnt to hunt from their human-taught parents, then these 3rd generation animals, once capable of hunting for themselves, could be released into the wild and would essentially be like true wild animals again.
I agree wholeheartedly that releasing captive-raised big cats into the wild is irresponsible and dangerous, as they are likely have learnt to associate humans with food and possibly also with companionship (à la Christian the lion). Thus it would be important to also set up some sort of operant-conditioning and perhaps conditioned flavour aversion protocols to ensure that this 3rd generation of predators were taught to avoid humans, as well as their livestock. This is typically what happens in the wild since offspring normally acquire the prey-preferences of their mothers.
As far as I can tell, this is the only way that the reintroduction of predators into the wild from captive-bred stock might actually work.
Yours,
Jothiratnam (Animal ethologist)
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