Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 7, 1991 TAG: 9103070569
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Leaders from the proposed Explore Park and Mill Mountain Zoo announced last week that they had joined forces, using Explore's land and Mill Mountain's staff, to start a breeding program for endangered species.
The first species they'd like to focus on: the red wolf, once a dominant predator in the South that is on the brink of extinction.
Explore planners talked about how this breeding project will help kick off the proposed living-history state park's environmental program, and zoo officials talked about how they hope this will revitalize the beleaguered zoo's mission.
The proposed breeding program fits into a larger context, though - a global one where the Roanoke Valley, of all places, offers an unusual niche.
It's fashionable nowadays for zoos to portray themselves as modern-day arks, temporary refuges for endangered animals until their numbers are increased to the point that they can be returned to the wild.
Many play up the breeding programs they're involved in, from the pandas at the National Zoo to the golden-lion tamarins at tiny Mill Mountain Zoo.
There are two catches with the Noah's Ark scenario, though.
With much wildlife habitat disappearing, there may not be a place to return some zoo-bred species.
And, zoos don't always have the space to devote to breeding endangered species. "So often with the endangered species, people think if they're endangered, everyone should get one," says Beth Poff, the Mill Mountain Zoo director. "But for a breeding program to be successful, it should have some set-up away from public activity." Even animals get bashful sometimes.
Many big-city zoos, though, are cramped for space, Poff says, and can't afford to squeeze in more animals, especially ones that won't be on public display.
That's where Explore - with its 1,300 acres along the Roanoke River gorge sitting wild and unused - comes in. "Beth tells me that having such a large piece of land is unusual," says Bern Ewert, Explore project director.
Quite unusual, in fact, says Roland Smith, a Tacoma, Wash., zoo official who administers the red wolf breeding program for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
"The red wolf doesn't need a tremendous amount of space," he says. A pen 100 feet by 100 feet is more than ample.
But finding zoos willing to commit even that amount of space has been hard, he says.
The red wolf's range once extended from Pennsylvania to Texas. But settlement nibbled at critical habitat, and hunters and disease nearly wiped out the rest.
"By the mid-1960s, there were only two isolated populations, in Northeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana," Smith says, and those remaining wolves were starting to interbreed with coyotes.
Scientists recovered just 14 full-blooded red wolves, and sent them to the Tacoma zoo, largely because the Pacific Northwest is free of the diseases that had infected the wolf in the South.
Today, the red wolf population is about 120, most scattered at 22 zoos across the country. "In the last three years, the population has doubled, and the reason it has doubled is because of zoos," Smith says.
The program has been so successful that the federal government has begun reintroducing about 20 red wolves into the wild at seaside wildlife refuges in North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida.
Nevertheless, "it's far too early to say the red wolf has successfully recovered," says Rupert Cutler, the former Defenders of Wildlife chief and Explore environmental director.
The Explore-Mill Mountain Zoo effort still has to be accepted into the red wolf species survival program, but Poff is hopeful that the first wolves could arrive "in a matter of months."
Smith says he's excited about the possibility of setting up a red wolf breeding site in Virginia. "It's really the South's story," Smith says.
In the meantime, Poff and Cutler hope to pick out other endangered North American species they could breed at the Explore site. Besides the land, Poff says, Explore offers something else unusual in the zoo world: a commitment to North American wildlife.
"When we talk about conservation, people talk about something on other continents," Poff says, "but there are some exciting things going on around here." From the Southern flying squirrel to the Florida panther, North America's endangered species are as interesting as those on any other continent, Cutler says.
By starting with breeding programs now and building the zoo itself later, Explore is evolving backward from the way other zoos have. But because of that, Poff says, Explore "could wind up being some of the things all zoos talk about."
For Explore, the red wolf represents a chance to get some meaningful programs under way before the park itself is built, as well as to validate its environmental credentials with potential donors, Ewert says.
For Mill Mountain Zoo, the benefits of the breeding program with Explore are less clear.
Poff cautions that zoo supporters shouldn't draw the conclusion that the zoo is becoming part of Explore - or stretching itself too thin when other projects, such as the Siberian tiger habitat and the beaver habitat, remain uncompleted.
She notes that the cooperation with Explore is the first concrete example of the larger environmental mission that was sought when the zoo's governing body changed its name to the Blue Ridge Zoological Society in 1988.
If Mill Mountain is to gain its long-sought accreditation by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, the zoo has to expand its facility plus increase its funding, Poff says.
A breeding program with Explore may be one way to get started on that, she says. "If we get the red wolf program going, that way we could show people something."
by CNB