Paris Zoo's Progressive Promise: No Elephants, Bears Because It's "Unkind"

After a six-year, multimillion dollar overhaul, the Zoological Park of Paris is once again opening its doors, with a new look -- and a new outlook. The zoo is aiming to create a more natural series of "biozones," with replica habitats for tropics, forests and grasslands in South America, Africa and Europe where the animals will be housed.

"We've invented a new zoo, whose concept is different from 20th century ones, where animals were exhibited like in some amusement park," said Thomas Grenon, head of the National Museum of Natural History, which manages the Vincennes Zoo. "This is a 21st-century zoo, which will show biodiversity and talk about it, and where the animals will live together as they do in their natural environment."

The zoo, set in a suburb of Vincennes, features a cathedral-like greenhouse as long as a football field, filled with tropical birds. The park houses 180 species -- including 74 bird and 42 mammal species -- totaling over 1,000 animals (aside from the insects).

Even more notable, the zoo's curators have taken animal welfare into account in their selection of species. Elephants and bears are no longer featured, AFP notes:

The new thinking is that it would be unkind to include such range-loving animals in the confines of a city zoo.

Geographer Jean Estebanez, a specialist in "humanimal" relationships, said that the zoo reflects a push towards animals to be seen not as a resource but as fellow species.

"The tendency in modern zoos is not to show animals hauled out of a different environment but to place us in the different environment itself," he added.

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