Wild animals, zoos and conservation

My view on zoos has shifted over time. I used to be straightforwardly against them, but the better ones now do serious breeding work for species that have almost no wild habitat left, and it's hard to argue that a captive population is worse than none. What I object to is keeping wide-ranging animals — elephants, big cats, marine mammals — in enclosures that can't possibly meet their needs, purely because they draw crowds. As for documentaries, they've done enormous good in making people care, but they've also created a slightly misleading picture: viewers see a pristine, crowded natural world that in many places no longer exists. Caring about animals people will never meet is, I think, largely a matter of exposure — which is why how we film them matters as much as how we protect them.