In terms of the population genetics developments in zoos and the, especially the development of population viability analysis in regard to the species survival plans that zoos, combining both their animal collection holdings and their knowhow, it seems to me that that has been extremely important. And one of the interesting aspects that I’ve been encouraging, Robert Lacy, population geneticist who is still in the employee of Brookfield Zoo, although he’s resident elsewhere, but he succeeded Uly Seal as the chair of the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission. And what Bob has done over the last year and a half, and I’ve been sitting in on sessions that were held at Brookfield, he’s gotten a group of people from around the world to contribute in terms of an exercise they call metamodeling where they’re trying to use programs that are focused on different aspects of an animal species population’s biology, whether it’s in terms of the habitat and the actual geographic range over which the genetic resources are distributing in the population, or whether it’s in terms of the social behavior of that particular species and how it controls the distribution of the genetic elements or whether it’s on the disease side. So what they’re doing is getting these models to talk to one another so that you have a combined assessment of what the real viability prospects are for the populations. So for instance, on the social side, they’re using a model developed in South Africa, the SimBA program, or whatever it is. It’s related to the social relationships within lion prides. And so models like that, as I say, will now be able to talk to one another and they’ll be shortly publishing a manual on the metamodeling, putting the models together. So we’re coming a long way and it’s been a long time coming, but it seems to me in terms of the long-range future of zoos, and in terms of the quality of their animals, it seems to me you want to have, in your collections, representatives of as healthy, viable representatives of the species you’re exhibiting as you can.
