Those efforts are funded by over 700 million visitors each year—181 million of them in the United States, alone—and their contributions are uniquely dependable because they’re not donors. They’re not buying tickets to help endangered species. (If that was the goal, they’d send a check in the mail.) No, zoo-goers exchange money for an exotic experience: the up-close ogling of a tiger’s bone-crushing teeth as it yawns, the easy muscle of a swinging orangutan, the endearing indolence of a giant panda. And as pathetic as those ASPCA ads set to Sarah McLachlan in the aughts were, pleas for donations will never have the earning potential of entertainment. If we want more money for conservation, providing a product may be our best bet.
At zoos and aquariums, the products are the animals, and I can stomach their captivity only when I think of each as a sacrifice, benefiting a mass of wild counterparts. It’s about time the realm of captivity entertainment leaned into this notion. If zoos functioned less like profit machines, nursing wealthy CEOs—if they cut the preposterous wild-animal-rescued-from-the-wild narrative and emphasized that while animals don’t belong in cages, their exhibits are for the greater good—they may attract more money from my curmudgeonly cohort. And our job is neither to boycott or angelize them, but to publicly shame them when they do extra-wrong—like shoot a gorilla who acted on natural instinct or separate orcas from their young—to reward them with federal funds when they do assist and reintroduce wild species, and to suck it up and go see the fat bears.
As the National Zoo’s giant pandas depart, they leave a loving audience behind. I’d once hoped that at the end of their journey to the China Wildlife Conservation Association, they wouldn’t land in a glass enclosure. Now, I also hope they retain their earning potential.