Hamilton Spectator, August 16, 2008

Wild Animals in Captivity is a book that asks provocative but necessary questions: How should animals be kept in captivity, and are there animals that should not be kept in zoos at all?

Author Rob Laidlaw, director of Zoocheck Canada, has travelled the world, studying how man captures and exploits wild animals, and puts them to work as zoo displays with little or no thought to their welfare and well-being.

He opens with his childhood observations of the Riverdale Zoo in Toronto (on the western flank of the lower Don Valley Parkway, which I saw in the early 1970s), which opened in the early 1890s. It was small, dank and unfriendly, with scant regard given to what the animals needed in order to lead stimulating, engaged lives. It was that scene that put him on his career path as a respected biologist and animal-rights activist.

He gives all manner of examples of animals being kept in captivity in ways that are thoughtless and cruel.

This important work's most poignant chapter gives examples of how four species live in the wild -- polar bears, elephants, whales (using Keiko, the star of the Free Willy movies, as an example) and gorillas -- and how zoos treat them.

Here's the scene Laidlaw paints of elephants in the wild: They are social creatures, living in families, with grandparents, parents, siblings, all following their matriarch. Calves play and frolic, watched closely by their mothers. They find a waterhole and stop for a bath and chat. At a signal from the lead female, they'll tromp off noisily, full of trumpeting and braying, for a trek to their preferred feeding ground. The next day, they'll be 30 kilometres away, foraging in a different part of their range.

In captivity: An orphaned elephant, Maggie, is kept alone in a small outdoor pen of hard, compacted dirt with a shallow pond. In the winter she stands in a small, unheated barn. She becomes lethargic and sinks to her side. It takes a tow truck and 19 hours to get her upright. She's sick with infection, overweight and unhappy.

In which scenario do you think elephants should be kept? Laidlaw presents a compelling argument that elephants are among the species that should never be kept in zoos.

There are all sorts of special features in Wild Animals in Captivity, and Laidlaw has done an admirable job. Grade school and high school students alike will find this challenging book a remarkable reference, and it should find a place in libraries and classrooms.

Review by Gary Curtis.