I hate all zoos, circuses and animal amusement parks, such as Sea World.

[DirkGently]

74. That is good stuff. And very much needed.

Everyone saying they'd prefer wildlife to live safely in clean, expansive natural habitat is right. But we can't give them that right now.

What we can do is evolve our sensibilities and shift into a mode where we focus on protecting and rehabilitating species and educating people while treating captive animals as humanely as possible. We screwed things up for them -- the least we can do is try to reduce or even reverse the damage.

And I think conservation efforts are helped enormously when people are able to see and appreciate live animals. Not stuffed and mounted, not tortured in a circus or ill-treated in a cramped zoo, but managed by professionals whose first priorites are conservation, study, and proper treatment. Just seeing an animal being carefully looked after in a healthy environment reinforces the type of relationship we're all saying we're supposed to have with the rest of the natural world. People who have only seen animals on television or mounted in a museum may never feel the connection that leads them to value other species and want to fight to protect and preserve them.

There is a small nature conservancy near where I live. It's actually moved to a more spacious site that I have not yet seen, but in its original form, it was small and cramped. The animals were all rescued -- from highway accidents or from misguided owners of exotic "pets." The enclosures were simple cages, but they were clean, as large as the facility could manage, and lovingly equipped with all the comfort the under-funded staff could manage. The lemurs had hand-made hammocks and climbing wires. The Arctic Fox someone thought would be a good apartment pet had boxes to hide in and planks to climb. Every animal was healthy and energetic and happy to see the workers there. You could go and look for free, but they took donations. We went to help them with promotional photos for their website and custom credit cards that generated small donations with every purchase.

Had they been shut down, all of those animals would be dead, period. The brain-injured racoon who couldn't keep her balance in trees anymore, the one-eyed Horned Owl, the Sherman's Fox squirrel injured on the road, the bobcat, the panther. Lemurs, herons -- the West African Tortoise who would follow you around her giant pen hoping for a bit more lettuce. That fragrant Arctic Fox that looked a little like a cute puppy dog, but was a wild thing to the core. All abandoned or injured. All taken in and cared for relentlessly, no questions asked.

The people working there were straight-up animal lovers, nursing baby squirrels in their living rooms and scrambling for donations of food and material to keep things going. I've got to go out see their new place soon and see how they're doing.