TEDx flower city and I’m happy to have
an opportunity to speak with all of you
about what I think the killings of Cecil
the lion and Harambee the gorilla should
have taught us june thirtieth 2015
american dentist and trophy hunter
walter palmer using a crossbow shoots
Cecil a 13 year old lion living in the
Hawaiian National Park in Zimbabwe Cecil
is wounded but not killed over the next
40 hours Palmer and his guides hunt down
Cecil to finish the kill social media
erupts there are calls for the death of
Walter Palmer the destruction of his
business his home address is given out
and it suggested he kill himself may 28
2016 a three-year-old boy at the
Cincinnati Zoo manages to climb into the
gorilla enclosure zookeepers act swiftly
and determined that in order to ensure
the boys safety they have to shoot to
kill Harambee a 17 year old gorilla and
social media erupts mourning the loss of
Harambee questioning the zoo’s decision
and placing the blame squarely on
intensive bad parents for those of us
who work in conservation organizations
these events gave us a glimmer of hope
that there might be a light cast on the
bigger issues related to wildlife and
instead the social media response made
resoundingly clear we are disconnected
from nature we are very comfortable
public shaming strangers about what we
perceive as poor parenting or the
horrors of canned hunting but as humans
we’re not so good at digging a little
deeper to discover what is really high
opening with the issues and in this case
the issues of what’s happening in
wildlife a report from the wildlife
World Wildlife Federation that just came
out a week or two ago suggests that
using 1970 as a base we are on track to
lose two-thirds of our wild animal
population by the year twenty twenty so
let’s talk about Harambee hashtag
Harambee has taken on a life of its own
thirteen thousand tweets in just the
last month almost none of which had
anything to do with Harambee the gorilla
or the gorillas in Africa or the role
that zoos play in saving gorillas from
extinction there are 100,000 gorillas
remaining in Africa there are three
species all considered critically
endangered because they have seen a
population decline of eighty percent in
just three generations there are eight
hundred and eighty mountain gorillas
remaining you know gorillas and really
all men animals reside in zoos not to
entertain but to educate their real
purpose is to connect with our guests to
inspire them to care to move them to
wanting to behave in more sustainable
ways for this planet the mission at the
Seneca Park Zoo is simplified to connect
care conserve and while we don’t yet
have gorillas at the Seneca Park Zoo
they are in the plans and how can you
look into the eyes of a gorilla and not
feel a connection and that ought to move
you to want to know more about the
issues faced by these majestic creatures
in Africa and for gorillas in the Congo
that means being poached for bush meat
and because they have a low reproductive
rate even a small amount of hunting
leads to population decline where
there’s human overpopulation there’s
habitat encroachment and habitat
destruction and even though many of
these animals live in national parks
those parts themselves are threatened by
her interests and oil exploration the
human story of exploitation of Natural
Resources for our own economic gain is
not a new one and it is universal and
while I have not been to the Congo I
have been to Madagascar and the story
there is really the same more than
eighty percent of Madagascar is
deforested 103 species of lemur all
endangered due to habitat loss but how
do you look at a villager and ask him to
not cut down the trees for timber and
fuel and not turn the forests into rice
paddies so he can feed his family he’s
living on the equivalent of two dollars
a day how can you tell him the life of a
lemur is more important than that we
have to stop pointing our fingers over
there and start looking at the root
causes of mass extinction and I can
promise you it’s not canned hunting so
let’s talk about Cecil for a minute the
wild of Born Free that romantic notion
of in the wild it doesn’t exist much
outside of our own imaginations where
Lions roam free there are nuisance
animals they take down livestock that
people depend on where elephants roam
free they destroy mass amounts of
vegetation and so we create national
parks sanctuaries preserves in a way to
manage the species manage populations
and ensure that humans and animals can
live together in shared space and we
invite tourists in for safari and yet
about every 20 minutes an elephant is
poached for its ivory so by my watch
that’s about 50 51 so far today at the
rate of 96 elephants today that’s about
35,000 a year there are just three
hundred and fifty thousand African
elephants remaining so if nothing
changes at this rate we’re looking at
extinction in about ten years you know
this leads to a role that Zeus plays
that I would venture most of you don’t
know about accredited
zoos participate in cooperative and
collaborative reading programs that are
designed to sustain a species enough
genetic diversity in that species to
sustain the population in conservation
care for the next 100 years this isn’t
done to perpetuate the existence of zoos
it’s to ensure the viability of that
species in natural range so the Seneca
Park Zoo participates in more than 30
Species Survival plans we’ve been
involved with assisted reproduction for
snow leopards African elephants polar
bears we’ve also been involved in
reintroducing native species into
natural range such as north american
river otter and lake sturgeon there are
more than 30 species that exist today
that were once extinct that are now back
in natural range due primarily due to
the work of zoos Mexican wolves golden
lion tamarins the California condor so
let’s go back to Seneca Park Zoo and
Cecil most of the animals that you see
in a zoo were born in a zoo there are
rescued and rehabilitated animals that
can’t be released but by and large when
you come to the zoo and see an animal
that animal was born in a zoo however to
ensure enough genetic diversity in a
small breeding population we have to
occasionally introduce new genetics so
are Lions came here from Africa in 2012
in Africa they were considered surplus a
national park can only sustain so many
Lions and our three lions were three
lions too many they could have become
part of a canned hunt but instead they
came here to Cepeda sustainable breeding
population and in fact their offspring
have already had offspring much of what
I’ve just shared with you was new to me
before I met I came to the zoo when I
took the job at the zoo I knew only that
I was being called to a new life my
father taught me that our job well were
on this planet is to leave the world a
better place
than we found it and this job allows me
to do that I am driven by the knowledge
that what I do every day saves animals
from extinction and I’m driven by the
knowledge that what all of you do every
day can save animals or destroy I’m not
asking each of you to leave your lives
and take up the cause the way that I did
but I am asking you to take some action
even if that action is only learning
more about the real issues we are
disconnected from nature and so we blame
bad parenting and canned hunting when
the truth is we are living in ways that
are unsustainable for this planet and so
my job it becomes in part reconnecting
people with nature getting dirt under
our fingernails so that the dirt under
the fingernails nourishes us and
inspires us and maybe with dirt under
our fingernails were a little less
likely to cast aspersions on social
media so what should we have learned
from the killings of Cecil and Harambee
I think what we should have learned is
that we’re living in the midst of a mass
extinction caused by human action and
that each one of us has a responsibility
and the ability to turn it around thank you very much
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