Ethical Question for Your Field of Interest

Is allowing/keeping animals in zoos/captivity the best for the animals?

Pros-Zoos and animals in captivity serve as a huge education tool. Animals invasive to particular areas present at zoos allow children and adults to learn and interact with them like they never could before. In many areas certain animals have stereotypes and bad stigmas behind them, but education of people helps to break and make people see past these bad stereotypes. Zoos also have species on the verge of extinction and AZA accredited zoos breed to keep certain genetic lines pure. In the wild due to decreasing numbers animals are interbreeding creating mutations within genetic lines without the work of zoos a clean genetic line in some species would not be found anymore. And many species on the verge of extinction would in fact be completely extinct. Another large need for zoos is that zoos allow animals who are kicked out of there natural habitats by humans a place to continue there lives, with cities growing bigger and country area depleting space in the wild for animals is largely decreasing.

Cons-Confinding animals that are meant to be roaming in the wild to a cage for the rest of their life can be very tramatising to the animal. People view zoos as a form of exploiding animals instead of as a means of education and think the animals are being treated in a way like some would say "circuis" freaks put in cages to ooh and aww at instead of being praised and appreciated for the beautiful animals they are and their interesting ways of life. By keeping and mating animals in captivity many lose their natural mating and parenting abitlites they develop over time in the wild.
Personal-In my eyes a zoo is a good and a bad thing. AZA accredited zoos are great places for animals to live since they have such high standards set for the animals being kept at there facilities. They only encourage the best and cleanest genetic line to help animal species approaching extinction. Zoos also play a large role in education, from working at the Green Bay NEW Zoo this summer as an education intern I saw first hand the many steps and areas a zoo covers to education chilren and adults on the animals we have in the zoo and in the wild. I believe zoos can be a great thing if they are kept up to a certain standard of living for the animals and education standard for the fecilitators of the zoo.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-zoos.html
http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=1