We have just celebrated World Wildlife Day and yes, as I have told you and thousands of us, we would like wild animals to be free, safe and with guaranteed well-being, but when we have destroyed 50 percent of our ecosystems, that desire it becomes impossible.
In such a way that now, another of the great missions and important challenges of the zoological institutions and sanctuaries of the country, is not only carrying out research and education work with animals under human care, and thus protecting and conserving wildlife, but also restore entire habitats and ecosystems.
In this sense, several zoos of the Association of Zoos, Hatcheries and Aquariums of Mexico (AZCARM), as well as the Ostok Sanctuary here in Culiacán, are specializing in the refaunation and reconstruction of ecosystems, a strategy that is known worldwide as rewilding.
Rewilding aims to restore ecosystems that have been modified by human disturbance making irrational and uncontrolled use of the plant and animal life that was present there. Refaunation aims to reintroduce native wildlife to its habitat to restore ecosystems and reverse the accelerated decline in biodiversity, allowing fauna, flora and natural processes to fully recover their areas.
This strategy posits that some species have such indispensable or vital roles in their ecosystems that they must be reintroduced even though they have long been extinct in the wild.
At the Ostok Sanctuary and at the Culiacán Zoo we are dedicating great efforts to this strategy. We rehabilitate animals and assess them behaviorally and physically to find out if they can fend for themselves in the wild and if they are capable of surviving on their own. Subsequently, a thorough investigation of the habitat is carried out to find out if the animal species does belong to that environment and if it is in conditions for the specimens that find food and full well-being.
To carry out all this work, the work of veterinarians, biologists and other experts is essential. In the last half year we have rescued, rehabilitated and released an average of 200 specimens into natural habitats: reptiles from the region, crocodiles, macaws, various endemic psittacines, migratory ducks, lynxes, opossums, raccoons, etc.
Unfortunately, all over the world, species are being reintroduced into habitats to which they do not belong, artificially inserting fauna into another ecological niche in which many manage to become stronger and end up displacing native species, taking over an ecosystem that is not theirs and taking it seriously. risk.
That is why we cannot and should not attend to those speeches and demands of pseudo-animalists or false activists that all animals, including those in zoos, must be reintroduced into the wild, since they start from ignorance and do not take into account if they were born under human care, if they are imported, if their habitat continues to exist, or if they are in physical and behavioral condition to be released.
For example, in zoos there are felines that are not native species of Mexico, and that several of their generations have been born under human care. If we released an animal like this in our territory we could cause serious and irreversible damage to the habitat, but unfortunately many times the so-called animalists have zero knowledge about wildlife and say that they will not rest until they see all the free animals running around. forests or jungles, without knowing that this could put entire ecosystems and the life of even more species at risk.
Rewilding is not a nice wish or a simple slogan, it is reconstruction, it is a paradigm shift in the coexistence of humans and nature that requires science and many experts.
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