The main objections to the practices of ex-situ conservation are:

1. Wild life is a vast and diverse assemblage of plants, animals and microbes. We can at best bring under human care only a very small fraction of the vast and diverse assemblage now facing the prospects of extinction. That too, the basic methods of ex-situ conservation, i.e., maintenance in captivity and breeding often results in adverse genetic and behavioural consequences for the species.

2. Ex-situ conservation strategy has so far acquired rather a limited success. Animals and plants can be maintained in captivity. Breeding and multiplying them present a little difficulty but has been done in a large number of cases. However, problems appear when reintroduction of the species into their natural habitats – either the same locality where the species occurred earlier or new habitats- is attempted. There have been frequent and costly failures, though in a few cases reintroduction attempts have been remarkably successful.

3. In Ex-situ conservation efforts all the money and resources are spent on the same species which is to be conserved. In in-situ conservation a number of species, known or unknown to us are benefitted when we look after the entire habitat for the species to be conserved.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

4. A major objection to ex-situ conservation efforts is the heavy expenditure incurred in the process. There is, no doubt, a great disparity in the money spent on captive maintenance, breeding and reintroduction as compared to that spent on similar in-situ programmes (Jenkins 1992). It has been calculated that keeping African elephants (Loxodonta Africans) and black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) in captivity shall cost 50 times as much as protecting and managing the same number of individuals in their wild habitats.

Ex-situ conservation efforts are usually under taken in cases of those endangered organism which do not have any chances of survival in the wild. In-situ conservation efforts even if earn if carried out with all earnestness shall not be able to preserve them. If we have to preserve such species, there is no other option but to bring them under human care.

Once they have been multiplied and infused with vigour by interbreeding with con-specific types they can be reintroduced into their natural homes. This will enable us to save the species. Thus, ex-situ conservation is the resort of last choice. Today a number of species are surviving because of our ex-situ conservation efforts. For example; Pere David’s deer, Addax, Oryx, the douc langur, przwalski’s horse etc. live today because ex-situ conservation methods were applied for their preservation.

We agree that natural selection cannot be simulated in ex-situ populations and for all practical purposes ex-situ conservation leads to domestication and disappearance of wild genes. However, ex-situ care of breeding populations can effectively serve as means to conserve unique or useful traits rather than the entire species as such (Zobel 1978).

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Individuals with a set of useful genes can be maintained in captivity for those genes only. We may let the captive population suffer all the adverse consequences which follow when the species is kept imprisoned for long periods of time. As long as the useful genes persist the individuals of the population are useful to us.

These genes may be used to improve domesticated organisms and even the wild ones which are threatened because of the loss of wild genes may be used compensated by these preserved genes. Thus ex-situ conservation offers an additional means to conserve the threatened in-situ populations as well.