I'll be honest, I never really cared about hoof stock until I saw a teeny brown 3 day old Arabian Oryx shivering on the ground and realized he was one of 1500 on the entire planet. That little animal taught me more about being an environmentalist than any lecture I ever attended.  I stood about 6 feet from him and helped a a few photographers snap his photo. I did this while I volunteered, at my zoo. 

 That being said, I want to take a moment to defend Sea World.

1. At the circus animals do tricks and people pay money to see wild animals do funny things.  At accredited zoos and aquariums, people pay money to see animals in habitats suitable for healthy living: play, breeding as well as viewing.

2. I admire Sea World's breeding program, and think they deserve a lot of credit for this work.  Look at this gorgeous otter pups and tell me Sea World isn't doing good in the world:

 I have mixed feelings about animal shows: on one hand if they help the public care about endangered animals they are actually doing good in the world. However if those animals are lacking suitable habitats, then I have a problem with it.

2.  Wild animals are always wild. It doesn't matter if they were hand-raised by a pack of loving nuns who treated that orca/mandrill/orangutan like a baby. They will always be wild. People who do  conservation work with living beings always recognize that the animal they care for and possibly have raised has no qualms about ripping their flesh off. I would wager to bet, the trainer was aware of the danger every moment working with the whale.

3.   Hazard is a fundamental part of working with wild animals.  I know someone who was bit by a python. Her reaction "I was moving him and I guess he just felt unsafe." Did she blame the python? Hell no. It's a python's job to bite when it's scared.Actually when I think about it, everyone I know who works directly with wild animals has a few bumps, scars and stories to tell.  For example, a monkey peed on my head. 

 4. Conservation Ecology is about ensuring the survival of species. That is all. These organizations, in the US, tend to participate in something called the "Species Survival Plan" or SSP. This plan helps ensure the genetic diversity of endangered animals and helps explain why zoos trade animals of breeding age.

5. There is an international organization called the IUNC that will help explain this better than I can:

The IUCN Species Programme working with the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) has for more than four decades been assessing the conservation status of species, subspecies, varieties, and even selected subpopulations on a global scale in order to highlight taxa threatened with extinction, and therefore promote their conservation. Although today we are operating in a very different political, economic, social and ecological world from that when the first IUCN Red Data Book was produced, the IUCN Species Programme, working with the Species Survival Commission and many partners, remains firmly committed to providing the world with the most objective, scientifically-based information on the current status of globally threatened biodiversity. The plants and animals assessed for the IUCN Red List are the bearers of genetic diversity and the building blocks of ecosystems, and information on their conservation status and distribution provides the foundation for making informed decisions about conserving biodiversity from local to global levels. 

6. You can learn more about endangered animals at: http://www.iucnredlist.org/ 

What happened at Sea World was tragic, but I hope this doesn't color people's perceptions of Zoos and Aquariums. Really, they are here for the best of purposes:   educating the public about biodiversity through conservation ecology.