The Zoological Parks of France are displaying a free open-air photo exhibition, called ‘Preserve Biodiversity’ on a fence railing in the Jardin des Plantes (the Botanical Garden).
The Zoological Parks have three missions: 1) biodiversity conservation, 2) research, and 3) education. The objective of the conservation programs is to maintain in nature the genetic diversity of viable populations of all species in order to preserve the biological interactions and ecological processes that take place there. But the threats to the diversity of life are difficult to control, so that an increasing number of species are doomed to disappear if measures are not taken.
It is from this observation that the need for a preservation of biological diversity outside its natural habitat has emerged through various techniques conducted in the Zoological Parks: 1) conservatory breeding, 2) reinforcement of populations, 3) reintroduction of populations to their natural habitats, and 4) gene banks etc.
The principle of these conservation actions is to keep viable wildlife populations in captivity, while minimizing the loss of their genetic variability, and then introduce a possible reintroduction or repopulation in the wild. The objective of the Zoological Parks of France is to maintain within captive populations 90% of the original genetic diversity over a period of 100 years. In collaboration with the European Association of Zoological Parks, museum zoos participate in more than 100 breeding programs, most of which are related to conservation actions in the natural environment.
This photo exhibition shows the link between conservatory breeding and the preservation of species in their natural environment through examples of species hosted in the three public Zoological Parks of the Museum of Natural History.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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