ZooMiami

I’m not sure what’s happened to the blog; I’ve started writing many times and always end up deleting the post. Nothing I write seems to be blog worthy anymore; maybe it’s just run its course.

We’re still in south Florida, Millie said this is our fourth year staying here at Southern Comfort RV, I think it’s only our third. We have had the same neighbor from Canada every year; they’ll be back again next year, as will we. 

We still go to the gym four days a week, this week on our day off, we visited the Miami Zoo. Like a lot of south Florida, they are still repairing damage from hurricane Irma. They didn’t suffer the devastation like August 1992 when Andrew just about destroyed it. Most of the Irma damage appeared to be trees blown over; many of them have been pushed back upright and are supported with braces.

The zoo animals are contained in large natural settings, usually with a mote and/or a shock fence to keep the them in their designated areas. There are no animals in steel cages like zoo’s of my youth. This means the zoo covers a very large area, it is over 300 acres all total. 

So if you visit here, you better have your good walking shoes on, because you will walk many miles on the paved trail through the habitats. Your only other options are renting a 2 or 4 passenger pedal car or taking a guided tram tour. The monorail which was destroyed in Andrew is back in service but it really doesn’t offer a good view of most of the critters. It’s just a good way to move from one section of the zoo to another. 

Photography club from a local school

Most of the animal residents are endangered in their natural environments, almost always from loss of habitat and hunting when humans move into their neighborhoods. The other reason is more troubling, that is poaching to profit from selling animal parts.

 I try to keep the blog topics light and it’s usually when I venture into controversial subjects that I end up deleting the whole thing, but our zoo visit has left me with a nagging question. Is it ok to keep animals in these artificial environments just for our amusement? The zoo supporters say we are saving them from extension. While these chosen few creatures are safe, putting animals on display in the “civilized” world has done absolutely nothing to stop the destructive nature of man.

It’s a conundrum, I don’t have any answers.