Brexit, Bukhara deer and a red tape swamp

This week our charity, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), joined calls to the UK Government to tackle endless red tape and overwhelming bureaucracy preventing conservation breeding.

Tuesday 31 January marked the third anniversary of Brexit and three years of struggle with animal transfers between zoos and aquariums across Britain and the EU, with numbers down from 1,400 transfers per year to just over 200.

Breeding programmes in good, conservation-focused zoos help to ensure the long-term survival of many species, so it is vital that a solution is found. Collaboration is more important than ever as we face a worldwide extinction crisis.

At Highland Wildlife Park, lots of our amazing animals are part of international endangered species breeding programmes, but the UK and EU governments have not negotiated a suitable replacement animal transfer framework which makes it harder for us to help keep captive populations healthy and diverse.

We know some of our male Bukhara deer are desperately needed on the continent for future breeding, but it has been impossible to arrange transfers for them. They were once one of the most threatened species on the planet, with only 400 left in the wild in the 1990s, and they were brought back from the brink of extinction thanks to healthy breeding programmes supporting reintroductions in their native range.

Species extinct in the wild are completely reliant on breeding programmes to survive. Animals born in zoos require close international cooperation to ensure a species can thrive as a vital back-up to declining wild populations.

Fortunately, the essential breeding programme for Scotland’s critically endangered wildcats is managed by RZSS within the UK, but there are many other examples in zoos and wildlife parks around Britain where threatened species are increasingly at risk.

As things stand, transporters need to have separate authorisation to operate in both the UK and the EU, but the differences in criteria make it time-consuming and costly for UK-based transporters to get EU authorisation, and the same is true in the other direction.

Restricted on border control points at ports mean animals would have to travel even longer distances by road to reach their destinations, which can be a huge welfare issue.

The current situation may also raise short-term welfare challenges when zoos have to find or create habitats for animals which would previously have left to join a breeding programme in another country.

Sadly, these limitations could also mean more and more empty enclosures across the country with less and less opportunities for British zoos like Highland Wildlife Park and Edinburgh Zoo to fully participate in international breeding programmes.

The UK Government and the EU must urgently come together to help the UK conservation community continue their vital work saving species from extinction.

With the world’s biodiversity under more pressure than ever, a new path must be forged through the current red tape to allow conservationists to resume a full programme of international collaboration – saving wildlife and creating a world where nature is protected, valued and loved.

David Field

RZSS CEO