An Enclosure Design Tool to enable zoos to create integrated, wild-type enclosures for great apes

对于我们的类人猿亲戚来说，时间已经不多了，它们在提高人类生活质量和在地球极限内生存之间的平衡中处于中心地位。例如，猩猩居住在农业扩张、木材开采和棕榈油种植园的主要地区；倭黑猩猩生活在长期战争的地区，山地大猩猩生活在对钶钽铁矿和石油等矿物至关重要的地区。如果栖息地继续被迅速破坏，所有的野生类人猿将在20年内灭绝（世界自然保护联盟[IUCN]）。在努力可持续地管理野生种群和栖息地的同时，现代动物园必须形成“方舟”，以维持濒危物种的生存种群，并在需要时重新在野外繁衍。这需要我们在方法上有一个阶段性的改变，从简单地“保存”动物的遗传物质到“保存整个有机体”——行为特征和身体适应是决定动物在自然环境中生存能力的重要组成部分。然而，类人猿是最难成功圈养的物种之一。肥胖等健康问题很常见，有些人表现出异常行为和压力迹象，往往与缺乏相关的身体和精神活动有关。作为这些物种子孙后代的管家，动物园需要被赋予有效的工具，以确保在一定的预算范围内拥有健康的野生型圈养种群。这就是我们的建议：设计一个围栏设计工具（EDT），使动物园能够独立制定有效的策略，以确保圈养猿能够并有动力表达和保持野生型行为。为了开发和验证EDT，我们将与我们的项目合作伙伴Twycross动物园合作，利用我们在野生猿类行为和圈养猿类管理方面的综合专业知识，重新设计黑猩猩和大猩猩的围栏。这不仅仅是一个简单的浓缩计划。我们将运用我们的知识，从运动，认知，社会和文化的角度，动物如何处理他们的自然栖息地的需求来设计创新的，集成的野生型围栏。我们将通过利用类人猿对一种行为的动机来鼓励其他行为的表达，为野生型行为提供机会和激励。在野外，所有的行为都是紧密相连的；通过利用它们之间的关系，我们可以确保野生类型的活动成为动物的一种生活方式，而不是短期的新奇事物。EDT将具有创新性，因为它将把所有特定物种的核心功能生境要求纳入一个系统。它将专注于复制它们栖息地的机械和结构特征，而不仅仅是美学，并将其与野生动物的数据联系起来，以确保最适合每个物种。据我们所知，这种合作关系将是动物园界第一次利用如此广泛的专业知识来开发和发布一个独立的工具，供其他动物园将来使用，而不需要学术投入，也不需要考虑不同的预算。我们的顾问委员会将促进EDT在整个动物园社区的传播。这将提高英国和全球动物园作为真正的“动物园”的能力，并通过吸引更多的游客来观看动物像野生动物一样的行为来改善它们的财务状况。我们的研究结果最终可以帮助那些保护和管理野生类人猿环境的人，通过了解复制自然环境系统所需的核心最小元素来支持野生类人猿的行为，并通过明智地选择可能的栖息地和更好地准备类人猿来支持更成功的重新引入计划。

Time is running out for our great ape relatives that are centre stage in the balance between improving the quality of human lives and living within the Earth's limits. Orangutans for example inhabit prime areas for agricultural expansion, timber extraction and palm oil plantations; bonobos inhabit areas of prolonged warfare and mountain gorillas inhabit areas that are crucial for minerals such as Coltan and for oil. If habitat destruction continues apace all great apes will be extinct in the wild within 20 years (World Conservation Union [IUCN]). In parallel with efforts to manage wild populations and habitats sustainably, modern zoos must form 'arks', to maintain viable populations of threatened species that can re-populate the wild if needed. This requires a step-change in our approach, to go beyond simply 'preserving' the animal for its genetic material to 'conserving the whole organism'- the behavioural traits and physical adaptations that are a vital part of what determines an animal's ability to survive in the natural environment.Great apes are, however, some of the most difficult species to keep successfully in captivity. Health problems, such as obesity, are common, and some display aberrant behaviours and signs of stress, often related to a lack of relevant physical and mental activity. As stewards of these species for future generations, zoos need to be empowered with effective tools to ensure healthy, wild-type captive populations within a range of budgets.That is what we are proposing: To devise an Enclosure Design Tool (EDT) that will enable zoos to develop independently effective strategies to ensure captive apes are able and motivated to express and maintain wild-type behaviours. In order to develop and validate the EDT, we will work with our project partner Twycross Zoo to apply our combined expertise on the behaviour of wild apes and management of captive apes to re-design their chimpanzee and gorilla enclosures.This is much more than a simple enrichment plan. We will apply our knowledge of how animals deal with the demands of their natural habitat from locomotor, cognitive, social and cultural perspectives to design innovative, integrated wild-type enclosures. We will provide both the opportunity and incentive for wild-type behaviours, by exploiting the apes' motivation for one type of behaviour to encourage the expression of others. In the wild, all behaviours are strongly interlinked; by playing-on the relationship between them we can ensure that wild-type activity becomes a way of life for the animals, not a short-term novelty. The EDT will be innovative in that it will incorporate all of the core species-specific functional habitat requirements in one system. It will focus on replicating the mechanical and structural features of their habitats, not simply the aesthetics, and in relating it to data for wild animals, it will ensure the best fit for each species.To our knowledge this partnership will be the first in the zoo community to draw on such a range of expertise to develop and release a stand-alone tool for future use by other zoos without academic input, and taking into account different budgets. Our advisory board will facilitate the dissemination of the EDT throughout the zoo community. This will improve the ability of UK and global zoos to act as true 'arks', and improve their financial situation by attracting more visitors to see animals behaving like their wild counterparts.Our results can ultimately help inform those protecting and managing great apes environments in the wild by developing understanding of the core minimum elements needed to replicate natural environmental systems to support great ape wild-type behaviour, and support more successful reintroduction programmes by informed selections of possible habitats and better prepared apes.