Sunday, December 20, 2009

Visit An Elephant, Contribute to Conservation

Zoos and Aquariums Essential to Species Survival

Silver Spring, MD (Vocus/PRWEB ) June 17, 2009 -- Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) accepted zoos are leaders in albatross attention apprenticeship and science, and allure the accessible to bless and abutment elephants by visiting them this summer.

AZA

Experiencing an albatross close-up is a affective experience Elephants are as admirable as their populations are fragile, and there's no bigger abode to affix with them and accept what is accepting done to advice them than at an AZA-accredited zoo. "Experiencing an albatross close-up is a affective experience," said AZA President and CEO Jim Maddy. "Elephants are as admirable as their populations are fragile, and there's no bigger abode to affix with them and accept what is accepting done to advice them than at an AZA-accredited zoo."

Status Of Elephants In The Wild

In the wild, elephants are in trouble. Elephant populations in Africa and Asia are beneath astringent blackmail from human-elephant battle (HEC), acute poaching, disease, and affecting accident of habitat.

Elephas Maximus - Over the endure 25 years, the citizenry of Asian elephants is estimated to accept beneath by 50 percent or more, advancement their endangered cachet according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (ICUN). There are now an estimated 45,000 Asian elephants in 14 countries.

Loxodonta Africana - African albatross populations are reportedly on the acceleration in contempo years, but are still brittle accepting declined by 25 percent over the endure 25 years. Conservation and apprenticeship efforts are acute to advance albatross populations and habitats. There are now an estimated 470,000 to 690,000.

Elephants in Zoos are Thriving

Today, 269 elephants abide in 77 AZA-accredited zoos. About one bisected are Asian elephants and bisected are African elephants. They are cared for circadian by able zookeepers and veterinarians who address their lives to these arresting animals.

AZA-accredited accessories launched the Species Survival Plan Program in 1981 as a accommodating citizenry administration and attention affairs for called at-risk species. The African and Asian Elephant Species Survival Plan (SSP) provides a absolute attention action that spans veterinary research, accessible education, and acreage attention projects. Its mission is to advance a able approaching for African and Asian albatross populations through zoo attention programs.

The AZA Standards for Elephant Management and Care set requirements for asylum design, nutrition, reproduction, enrichment, and veterinary affliction to ensure high-quality zoo habitats for elephants. These binding standards, adopted in 2003, are alive and the North American albatross citizenry is thriving.

With the advice of elephants in AZA-accredited zoos, elephants about the apple are benefitting from veterinary advancements. Because of accurate analysis in zoos, artificial formation is now accepting accomplished in Asia; contraceptive drugs and techniques are accessible as an addition to culling; and tuberculosis tests and drugs are cautiously implemented worldwide. Similarly, the abstraction of pheromones and ancestry behavior was aboriginal articular and advised in zoos.

Zoos Conservation Efforts

AZA-accredited zoos play an important role in furthering albatross attention on a common basis. In accession to acknowledging the albatross Species Survival Plan, 10 examples of these basic programs include:

 

    The Tarangire Elephant Tracking Project in Tanzania. This activity advance African elephants in the Tarangire National Forest by agency of all-around accession systems to map their clearing patterns. This will aid in drafting acreage use proposals to assure the elephants' migration, agriculture and calving areas. The affairs aswell supports the college apprenticeship of built-in Tanzanians who ambition to allot their alum plan to attention studies.
     
      Human Elephant Conflict in Tamil Nadu, India. Human Elephant Conflict (HEC) is a ample and growing blackmail to elephants as their accustomed abode continues to abate in size. This activity will abode a applicable administration action for albatross affluence with appropriate accent on aisle administration in adjustment to anticipate HEC.
       
        Uda Walawe National Park, Sri Lanka. The purpose of the activity is to abstraction Asian albatross amusing behavior and citizenry dynamics in the Uda Walawe National Park. Elephants in the esplanade are threatened by development alfresco of the esplanade and abstracts will ultimately advice in the authoritative of wildlife administration decisions that abate human-elephant battle and accommodate alternating development strategies to advice sustain the albatross citizenry in Sri Lanka.
         
          Sumatra Elephant Conservation Response Units, Indonesia. This advancing activity by the Conservation Response Unit (CRU) in Sumatra will investigate human-elephant interactions in adjustment to advance bounded acumen by utilizing already alone bound elephants and their mahouts (handlers) for absolute acreage based attention interventions for agrarian elephants. The capital objectives are: 1) mitigating human-elephant conflict; 2) abbreviation wildlife abomination through backwoods convoying and monitoring; 3) adopting acquaintance a allotment of locals of the accent of attention elephants and their habitat; 4) establishing community-based ecotourism to ensure abiding CRU banking sustainability.
           
            Disease Investigation in Assam, India. Disease is a accustomed blackmail to both agrarian and managed elephants, and this activity aims to abstraction the prevalence of ache amidst agrarian populations in the Assam arena to advance strategies for their aegis from diseases. The activity hopes to aftermath abject band abstracts on communicable and non-infectious diseases to anticipate approaching cases amidst agrarian albatross populations.
             
              The Waterways and Dura Recovery Project, Western Uganda. Poaching has devastated the region's albatross population, and this activity aims to actualize bigger ecology and administration in the across by stationing rangers in key locations to anticipate added loss. Additionally, the activity aims to animate elephants to use the adequate aisle to repopulate the region.
               
                Capacity architecture by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), Kenya. The role of the NRT is to advance the accommodation and ability of its basic association conservancies in biodiversity conservation, accustomed ability administration and accustomed assets based enterprises. These efforts aim to advice both elephants and bodies in the Northern Kenya region.
                 
                  Investigating African albatross articulate advice which has led to the analysis of two new vocalizations that had never been appear for elephants in the agrarian or in zoological settings. The abiding ambition of the albatross delivery activity is to advance and apparatus articulate advice technology in the agrarian to advice with attention and administration efforts.
                   
                    Conducting analysis on Endotheliotropic Elephant Herpesvirus (EEHV). The collaborative abstraction aims to analyze the causes of the ache in zoos and in the agrarian in an accomplishment to ultimately anticipate approaching EEHV fatalities, as able-bodied as acquisition the cachet of EEHV in alone elephants, their abeyant for added transmission, and analyze predisposing factors that accomplish specific elephants added affected to the disease.
                     
                      Supporting the development of The National Elephant Center (TNEC) in adjustment to enhance the adeptness to abound and administer zoo albatross populations in North America and to actualize a acceptable approaching for elephants through analysis and attention efforts by zoo albatross affliction experts.
                      Your Visit Makes a Difference

                      Elephants in AZA-accredited zoos advice brainwash visitors, accomplish affecting connections, and change behaviors that absolutely appulse albatross conservation. In a Harris Interactive poll, 95 percent of Americans said that seeing elephants in zoos helps humans acknowledge them more. That aforementioned poll begin that 86 percent of respondents accept that visiting zoos encourages humans to accord time and/or money to albatross conservation.

                      Zoos consistently accommodate conservation-oriented educational encounters to brainwash the accessible about the attention cachet of elephants in the wild. Many aswell action developed apprenticeship classes to focus on the plight of elephants and the attention efforts currently underway, with a allocation of allotment funds traveling anon to abide in-situ plan to advice elephant.

                      By visiting elephants in accepted zoos, humans advice accomplish accessible the acreage conservation, research, abode restoration, abridgement of human-elephant conflicts and community-based initiatives all-important to assure agrarian populations. AZA-accredited zoos accommodate the majority of allotment for the International Elephant Foundation, acknowledging albatross attention projects worldwide. http://www.aza.org/Newsroom/PR_2008IEF/index.html

                      Connecting with Elephants

                      There is no acting for abutting with an albatross up close. You can accept a different acquaintance with an albatross at these AZA-accredited zoos:

                      Africam Safari Park
                      Puebla, Mexico

                      Albuquerque Bio Park
                      Albuquerque, NM

                      Audubon Zoo
                      New Orleans, LA

                      BREC's Baton Rouge Zoo
                      Baton Rouge, LA

                      Bronx Zoo
                      Bronx, NY

                      Buffalo Zoo
                      Buffalo, NY

                      Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
                      Tampa, FL

                      Buttonwood Park Zoo
                      New Bedford, MA

                      Caldwell Zoo
                      Tyler, TX

                      Calgary Zoo
                      Calgary, Alberta, Canada

                      Cameron Park Zoo
                      Waco, TX

                      Central Florida Zoo
                      Sanford, FL

                      Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
                      Colorado Springs, CO

                      Chicago Zoological Society - Brookfield Zoo
                      Chicago, IL

                      Cincinnati Zoo
                      Cincinnati, OH

                      Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
                      Cleveland, OH

                      Columbus Zoo & Aquarium
                      Columbus, OH

                      Dallas Zoo
                      Dallas, TX

                      Denver Zoo
                      Denver, CO

                      Dickerson Park Zoo
                      Springfield, MO

                      Disney's Animal Kingdom
                      Lake Buena Vista, FL

                      El Paso Zoo
                      El Paso, TX

                      Fort Worth Zoo
                      Fort Worth, TX

                      Fresno Chaffee Zoo
                      Fresno, CA

                      Granby Zoo
                      Granby, Quebec, Canada

                      Greenville Zoo
                      Greenville, SC

                      Honolulu Zoo
                      Honolulu, HI

                      Houston Zoo
                      Houston, TX

                      Indianapolis Zoo
                      Indianapolis, IN

                      Jackson Zoo
                      Jackson, MS

                      Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens
                      Jacksonville, FL

                      Kansas City Zoo
                      Kansas City, MO

                      Knoxville Zoo
                      Knoxville, TN

                      Lee Richardson Zoo
                      Garden City, KS

                      Lion Country Safari
                      Loxahatchee, FL

                      Little Rock Zoo
                      Little Rock, AR

                      Los Angeles Zoo
                      Los Angeles, CA

                      Louisville Zoo
                      Louisville, KY

                      Memphis Zoo
                      Memphis, TN

                      Miami Metrozoo
                      Miami, FL

                      Milwaukee County Zoo
                      Milwaukee, WI

                      Montgomery Zoo
                      Montgomery, AL

                      Nashville Zoo
                      Nashville, TN

                      Niabi Zoo
                      Coal Valley, IL

                      North Carolina Zoo
                      Asheboro, NC

                      Oakland Zoo
                      Oakland, CA

                      Oklahoma City Zoo
                      Oklahoma City, OK

                      Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
                      Omaha, NE

                      Oregon Zoo
                      Portland, OR

                      Philadelphia Zoo
                      Philadelphia, PA

                      Phoenix Zoo
                      Phoenix, AZ

                      Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium
                      Pittsburgh, PA

                      Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
                      Tacoma, WA

                      Reid Park Zoo
                      Tucson, AZ

                      Riverbanks Zoo
                      Columbia, SC

                      Roger Williams Park Zoo
                      Providence, RI

                      Rosamond Gifford Zoo
                      Syracuse, NY

                      Saint Louis Zoo
                      Saint Louis, MO

                      San Antonio Zoo
                      San Antonio, TX

                      San Diego Zoo
                      San Diego, CA

                      San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park
                      Escondido, CA

                      Santa Barbara Zoo
                      Santa Barbara, CA

                      Sedgwick County Zoo
                      Wichita, KS

                      Seneca Park Zoo
                      Rochester, NY

                      Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
                      Vallejo, CA

                      Smithsonian National Zoo
                      Washington, D.C.

                      Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo
                      Tampa, FL

                      Maryland Zoo in Baltimore
                      Baltimore, MD

                      Toledo Zoo
                      Toledo, OH

                      Topeka Zoo
                      Topeka, KS

                      Toronto Zoo
                      Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

                      Tulsa Zoo & Living Museum
                      Tulsa, OK

                      Utah's Hogle Zoo
                      Salt Lake City, UT

                      Virginia Zoo
                      Norfolk, VA

                      Wildlife Safari Inc,
                      Winston, OR

                      Woodland Park Zoo
                      Seattle, WA

                      Zoo Atlanta
                      Atlanta, GA

                      Visit any of these AZA-accredited zoos today to apprentice added about elephants, how the zoo is accidental to attention and what you can do to help. www.aza.org/FindZooAquarium

                      About AZA
                      Founded in 1924, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums is a nonprofit alignment committed to the advance of zoos and aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation. Look for the AZA logo whenever you appointment a zoo or aquarium as your affirmation that you are acknowledging a ability committed to accouterment accomplished affliction for animals, a abundant acquaintance for you, and a bigger approaching for all active things. The AZA is a baton in all-around wildlife conservation, and your hotlink to allowance animals in their built-in habitats. To apprentice more, appointment www.aza.org.

                      Contact:
                      Steve Feldman, AZA, 301.562.0777 ext.252
                      Jackie Marks, AZA. 301.562.0777 ext. 236

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