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Asked by imnotmeommyclone to Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 21 Jun 2012.
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Kevin Mahon answered on 21 Jun 2012:
Wihtout the proper preparations, it’s very dangerous. If we were to take a random lion from a zoo cage and out him/her in the middle of the jungle it likely wouldn’t survive.
Reintroducing captive species is a careful process, it usually involves trying to resocialise them and attempting to get them able to live without the human intervention they’ve come to depend upon. Many animals natural instincts are messed up due to captivity and things as simple as hunting/feeding may be difficult for them.
It’s especially hard with really social species – trying to get a captive animal to be accepted into a group of wild ones is extremely difficult. It’;s because of these reasons that zoo animals are rarely released back into the wild and usually sent to another zoo or sanctuary. Many animals in zoos simply will never be able to go back to the wild.
The Moon BEars I worked with were all captive from birth and were entirely dependant on humans to survive, they could never go back to the wild, which was upsetting for me and them!
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Joanna Cruden answered on 21 Jun 2012:
There have been a few cases when the animals have been released into the wild and still pop back to see their human friends. The success can also vary with species and some animals may be too sick or dependent to be released into the wild. People are trained and experts in releasing animals, if you watch some of the Australian RSPCA programs on TV it is pretty amazing what they have to do to get animals back into the wild. It has to be staged and important that they become de-huminised. Also you have to be sure they are not going to pass diseases onto the wild animals or get killed by them.
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