With zoos shut due to Covid-19, conservation suffers With zoos shut due to Covid-19, conservation suffers 15 Dec 2020 Zoos do a lot more than welcome excited visitors; closures due to the pandemic are affecting conservation work worldwide
They might be best known as convenient days out for the kids, but zoos often step in to conservation situations where all else has failed. Take the scimitar-horned oryx, which once roamed central Chad in large numbers. Civil unrest during the 1980s saw the species declared functionally extinct in the wild. Between 2009 and 2013, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) spearheaded efforts to reintroduce captive-bred oryx to Chad; numbers are now growing.