AFDPZ - Conservation Commission

The aim of the association is to network French zoological establishments, to ensure their representativeness before the supervisory authorities, as well as before international organizations, and to work to promote them to the media and to the general public.

Priority is placed in helping to comply with the Ministerial Decree of March 25, 2004, particularly with regard to the 3 parks missions: Conservation, Education and Research, as well as promoting the code of ethics among its members. ethics of AFDPZ and investment in biodiversity conservation.

This is why AFDPZ has created a Conservation Commission.

This aims to encourage AFDPZ members to get involved in the conservation of endangered species by supporting programs to combat the loss of biodiversity. Linking in-situ (in natural environment) and ex-situ (in captivity) conservation is essential to achieve this objective.

How?

The zoos that are members of the Association Française des Parcs Zoologiques (AFdPZ) participate in several ways in the global effort to conserve endangered species: through their scientific work on the species they harbor (which allow studies impossible to carry out in the nature), through their breeding programs, by making veterinary or ethological skills available to those working in the field, by donating animals to operations to strengthen populations and reintroduce species into their natural environment, etc.

They also get involved by making their financial contribution to programs conducted in nature around the world. Individually, each park finances specific programs, which represents a total of 3 million euros per year for French parks, and collectively, AFdPZ establishes a list of programs each year that it co-finances directly.

This year, this commitment by zoos is of particular importance for those working in the field affected by the consequences of the pandemic (drop in donations and funding, actions hampered by containment, etc.).

The AFdPZ has therefore just unveiled the list of 18 programs it will support this year to help save 18 species, 8 of which are critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List. The selected programs work for emblematic species such as the white-handed tamarin (Colombia), the bonobo or the Grauer gorilla (Congo), the Andean condor (Argentina) or the Sulawezi crested macaque (Indonesia), but also less "charismatic" species such as the giant armadillo (from Brazil), the greater bamboo lemur (a lemur from Madagascar), or the tamarau (a buffalo from the Philippines). Some programs supported since 2013 are real partners of AFdPZ.

Requiring long-term monitoring, these programs are producing encouraging results ... even if they still remain fragile, like the monarch of Tahiti. For the 2019-2020 breeding season “Here we are at 28 young having successfully fledged, and we still have an incubated nest… We are a long way from the 19 adults protected in 1998 and I am moved to know that now in one season we in "produced" more than the initial number of protected survivors "declares Caroline Blanvillain, ornithologist at the SOP - Manu (ornithological society of Polynesia), which manages the protection of the monarch of Tahiti. This small flycatcher endemic to Tahiti was included in the list of the 30 most endangered birds in the world in 2009.

Some programs supported by AFdPZ concern endangered species living in Europe and even in France. This is the case of the European mink, which is the subject of a European Life program coordinated by the League for the protection of birds (LPO). In addition to AFdPZ's participation in financing the program, the Calviac Zoological Reserve (Dordogne) and Zoodyssée Park (Deux-Sèvres) participate in the French National Action Plan, for example through the breeding of mink with a view in particular to their reintroduction into their natural environment.

The Le PAL Nature Foundation provides financial support to the Conservation Commission of the AFDPZ.