Captive Breeding - History

History

Captive breeding has been used with success for some species for some time, with probably the oldest known instances of captive breeding being attributed to menageries of European and Asian rulers, a case in point being the Pere David's Deer. This species was successfully saved through captive breeding programs after almost being hunted to extinction in China. The idea was popularized among modern conservationists independently by Peter Scott and Gerald Durrell in the 1950s and 1960s, founders of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and Jersey Zoo, who demonstrated success with a wide variety of life forms in the 1970s ranging from birds (e.g. Pink Pigeon), mammals (e.g. Pygmy Hog), reptiles (e.g. Round Island Boa) and amphibians (e.g. Poison arrow frogs). Their ideas were independently validated by the success of Operation Oryx (under the auspices of the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society), which captive bred the Arabian Oryx starting in 1963 for eventual reintroduction to the wild. The Przewalski's horse has recently been re-introduced to the wild in Mongolia, its native habitat.