Examining the representation of locally threatened species in North American zoos

Abstract A perceived dissonance exists between the stated conservation mission of modern zoos and the composition of species in their care. A bias toward charismatic taxa over threatened ones has been demonstrated in several studies. However, these prior examinations have principally relied on species threat status derived from global lists, and threat status reported for species on national and subnational lists often differ from global assessments. It has been suggested that some globally non‐threatened species maintained in zoos might fulfill local conservation priorities. In this study, we compare local threat status and zoo population size for native bird, mammal, reptile and amphibian species in North American zoos to assess the representation of locally threatened taxa. We found that native locally threatened species were kept in North American zoos slightly less than would be expected by chance; however, of the species that were represented in zoos, those that were threatened in more of the subnational regions where they occurred averaged larger populations within zoos. This suggests that the direct contribution from zoo animals to the conservation of locally threatened species is relatively limited with respect to taxonomic coverage, but this contribution may be underestimated by strictly counting the threatened species kept in zoos.