Aquarium fish should be released, says wildlife park owner
Conservationist hoping to see end of zoos sets sights on marine parks
HE IS the conservationist who plans to send the animals in his parks back to the wild and has called for all zoos to close.
Damian Aspinall, who has recently hired the Prime Minister’s wife Carrie Johnson, has now set his sights on banning aquariums.
“I think aquariums are really wrong,” he told The Sunday Telegraph, adding: “We do enough damage to marine life – why would we keep these beautiful animals in aquariums? A lot of the fish are wild-caught, too. If I had my way, I’d rewild the fish.”
Mr Aspinall is celebrating after securing permission to send his herd of 13 elephants to Kenya, having escaped a diplomatic row when the country’s government said it had not been aware of the charity’s plans. He says this was a misunderstanding and the plans are in the final stages, with the elephants expected to be sent abroad in six months to a year.
“Our elephants have suffered probably less, but of course they’ve suffered,” Mr Aspinall said. “They’ve had foot conditions, they’ve had skin conditions – of course they’ve suffered over the years. So they are lucky they have eight acres of land to run around in, but if you love elephants – as I do – really, you have to want to send them back to Africa.”
The Aspinall Foundation’s next cause could be freeing fish from aquariums. Mrs Johnson, a former adviser to oceans charity Oceana, agrees that fish “have less space to roam” in tanks and should be in the open seas.
Mr Aspinall believes the millions spent keeping creatures in European zoos is a “travesty of justice”, adding that this money would be better spent protecting wild animals from poachers.
The Government is on board with his ideas, with ministers pointing to the Aspinall zoos as an example of how wildlife parks can achieve in situ conservation. There are also plans to ban the breeding of elephants in this country so that they are phased out in zoos, and to strip institutions of their charitable status if they do not spend enough of their income on conservation.
The aim of the Aspinall Foundation is to create a world where zoos no longer exist – which many may find ironic, as the charity began as gambling entrepreneur John Aspinall’s menagerie. Though he released animals into the wild, his son Damian goes further, and wishes to set a template for zoos around the world.
“Zoos were created as a business, not as conservation,” he said, adding that enclosures are usually built, at great expense, “for the benefit of the public, not for the animals”.
And what would become of zoos once they lost all their animals? The Aspinall Foundation hopes that they would become rescue centres for sick or hybridised animals which have no chance of surviving in the wild – so people could visit guilt-free.
“There is a role for rescue for welfare reasons,” Mr Aspinall said. “I think what will happen, what I hope will happen, is these zoological institutions become rescue centres for animals.”