Like most people who care deeply about wildlife I can only be happy to see animals living as they should wild and free. But what about the animals that have been rescued from captive situations ? Animals are like us, they learn key survival skills from their mothers and living in a natural environment so how do they learn those skills if they have been reared in captivity with human contact ? They realistically only have a chance of surviving in the wild if they are not habituated to humans so if they have grown up captive how would that be possible. Since our attitudes to wild animals are changing so are laws about keeping them and it's not before time but there are a lot of animals kept as pets or entertainment in the world. Some have a better chance of being rehabilitated than others which depends on the way they live in the wild. One of the most astounding success stories was Christian the lion bought at Harrods in the 1970's by two young guys then taken to Africa to begin the long process of learning how to be a lion. It was an amazing story that isn't always going to end well for most animals but I'd like to think that conservationists are putting more time and resources into tackling what was once thought almost impossible but it's costly and time consuming. The other issue is the obvious, that they also need safe places to live. In a world where so many wild animals have nowhere to live I wonder how space can be made for those from captive situations.
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