January 01, 2014 | News | New Research Project

Where is the eagle owl?

The Eagle owl (bubo bubo) is one of the largest species of owls.The animals mainly live in areas sparsely populated by humans. © pepipepper / photocase.com

Zoos play an important role in species protection, not only with founding and education but because breeding programs help conserve rare animal species. These programs often focus on exotic animals even though some of our indigenous species are as much threatened by extinction. An new MPIDR research project has been started to record zoos that keep rare European animal species.

Eagle owls, brown bears, and fire salamanders have one thing in common: They all are animal species indigenous to Europe and listed on the European Red List. The list contains all animal species considered endangered or threatened by extinction. Of around 21.000 species worldwide, 6000 are living in Europe

MPDIR researcher Dalia Amor Conde for some time now has been collaborating with zoos that are working on species protection: ”The biggest threat for certain species is habitat loss as well as the spread of infectious diseases. In some cases an insurance population in zoos can be key to prevent a species extinction, until it can be reintroduced to its former habitat."

But to manage insurance populations of threatened species, an inventory will help to know which species are kept in which zoos and how many individuals of which species are living there. Such inventory is the focus of a new research project with the aim to asses the demography of the species at risk to inform management practices to increase their populations. The project has been funded with a total sum of 50.000 Euros by the Gerhard und Ellen Zeider Stiftung. "Many zoos work with species that are far away and there is an increasing need of zoos to look at their local european threatened species," says Dalia Amor Conde.

With funding from said foundation, Dalia Amor Conde and her colleagues are currently recording threatened species of the German Alp region. First results show that around 2.6% of the threatened species registered on the Bavarian Red list are kept in German zoos. And they found nine species in zoos considered to be extinct in nature.