FOUNDED AS O.O.S.-NL IN 1997, CHANGED INTO E.S.F. IN 2003.
Conservation through captive breeding.
By Henk Zwartepoorte, president
Over the last few decades conservation through captive breeding has become a necessary instrument in order to save species from extinction. The speed in which species disappear from the wild is tremendous and causes for this and decline all over the world are various.
Growth of the worlds human population, loss of habitat, fragmentation of populations, pollution of water and air, climate change, human settlements and development of agriculture and industry, human consumption of wild species but also the international pet trade have a very large negative effect on wild populations of animals but also plants.
Keeping animals as pets is as old as the existence of the first men (homo sapiens) and also domestication of wild animals and cultivation of plants brought many advantages to men. However since western people got more and more alienated from wildlife, in particular those living in cities pets and certainly exotic pets became more and more popular. Over the last few decades this resulted in an increase of wildlife trade to a level that can no longer be considered as sustainable. With the growth of the human population in Asia, where human consumption of exotic animals next to pet trade reached unacceptable levels, this totally ran out of hand. Some species become so popular that even the last individual animals will be taken from the wild.
