I'm not what you'd call a real fan of zoos, but neither am I their implacable enemy. I certainly think there is a good case for having a few animals and birds in cages, under suitably spacious and humane condition, if only because a zoo may provide the only experience that many unfortunate city children will ever have of large wildlife in the flesh. A healthy tiger or giraffe in a zoo could do a lot to promote a child's sense of wonder and fascination, and convince him that there really is life beyond the nearest TV or video screen. But I do think that zoos in Thailand (and probably elsewhere too) should be made more accountable. Where do they get their wildlife? How much (or how little) of it is captive-bred? Isn't likely that Thai zoos are contributing to a steady drain on populations of scarcer species as they seek to replace from the wild those animals that die while in their care? Are they not encouraging the illicit trade in endangered wildlife through buying Thai-caught animals, or those that are smuggled across the border from Laos or Cambodia? (I am reminded of the White-shouldered lbis–one of the rarest and most threatened birds in all of Asia, which I saw in the Bang Sai bird park at Ayutthaya a few years ago). Animal welfare folks can also do a lot of damage here. Who hasn't had their heartstrings twanged by the sight of an infant gibbon being toted around by a child vendor. Yet take pity on the unfortunate animal, and buy it to give it a good home, and you generate a financial incentive for the villagers back in the forest to shoot more nursing mother gibbons.

These musings were prompted following a short visit (my first ever, as it happens) to the Khao Khieo Open Zoo in Chonburi, qwhile on my way back from Rayong with my wife and daughter. I think the most exciting captive mammal I saw there was a sexy fashion (?) model, perched on the back of a motorcycle in a quiet corner, breasts fully exposed, while two or three denim-clad photographers snapped away. But my eighteen month-old daughter was fascinated by the binturongs, clouded leopards, and most all by the ostriches that paced the grounds of their enclosure. As for me, I was, inevitably, drawn to the walk-in aviary. I've visited such aviaries both in England and in Hong Kong, and was interested to see how the Khao Khieo aviary would measure up.

I try to treat such aviaries as I would a piece of forest, walking slowly, binoculars poised to scan the leaf-litter and underbrush for movement. Using bins at Khao Khieo, though, is a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut since the aviary is packed out with terrestrial birds, especially Siamese Firebacks. This is no surprise, I suppose, since this pheasant breeds so readily in captivity that the chief difficulty is in deciding what to do with all the progeny. (Roast pheasant comes to mind?) In fact, the aviary was stuffed full of pheasants: besides the firebacks, there were jonesi Silver, a couple of lewisi Silver, Grey Peacock-Pheasant, a couple of Great Argus, and the inevitable chickens (sorry, I mean Red Junglefowl). Other birds included Emerald Doves, Black-naped Orioles, Golden-crested Mynas, two species of parakeets, White-crested, White-necked and Black-throated Laughingthrushes. There wasn't exactly what you could call a theme to the aviary. It wasn't supposed to be a Thai forest (there were Crowned Pigeons from New Guinea there); it wasn't even supposed to be a forest (there were waterbirds such as Anhinga, Purple Swamphens, two species of ducks). Most Thai bird families were unrepresented. It was just a bunch of birds in a cage, with the emphasis mainly on those that can be kept easily in captivity. There also didn't seem to be very much in the way of signboards or materials.

The other thing that struck me was that, although there was a small pool in the aviary, the surrounding vegetation was all bone-dry. Now I know next to nothing about keeping birds in captivity (and I know there are a great many expert aviculturists in Thailand). But it occurs to me that if you've gone to the enormous expense of building an aviary, surely you could go a bit further and install some sort of water sprayer which would keep the foliage in one end of it suitably moist and drenched, creating the conditions in which some evergreen, humidity-loving plant species might survive. This would probably make life more amenable to the aviary's inhabitants, enable a more representative selection of birds, including more evergreen forest species, to be stocked and…who knows? Maybe some of them might even breed.

I think the best thing I saw at Khao Khieo though, (surpassing even the semi-nude model) was the free-flying colony of Painted Storks and Spot-billed Pelicans in the trees around the base of the rocky hill behind the zoo. I counted 80 pelicans at dusk, and there were seven old nests which appeared to be of this species. Who knows how many shot and winged large waterbirds have, over the years, found their way into captivity in this country? Yet here we see a really interesting example of how a zoo might, through controlled or opportunistic releases, enable the descendants of such birds to contribute to the possible re-establishment of a fully wild, self-sustaining population of a species, (Spot-billed Pelican is otherwise certainly extinct as a breeding bird in Thailand).

I don't know very much about how the stork and pelicans at Khao Khieo sustain themselves, but I can only assume that they are breeding very successfully indeed, given their numbers. I guess they flight out to feed at the nearby lake at Bang Phra, remaining largely unmolested because of local awareness of the zoo. It is certainly a really interesting situation that deserves to be fully documented. It might make a nice, not too demanding research project for a postgraduate student.

Philip D. Round
April 1996