Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
participation was so low. Approximately 66% of the target audience became
aware of the program through fairly passive means (announcements at meet-
ings and information on Web sites). This was all that was possible given the
limited resources at LPZ. With greater funding, a person dedicated to com-
municating with the zoological institutions could have been hired. A more
direct recruitment approach would have raised awareness and allowed for
an opportunity for potential participants to have their individual questions
answered. According to the evaluation, one recommendation for improving
the system was to clarify the roles of government and private sectors in the
regulation of TB control. Having a person committed to the role of “commu-
nicator” or “zoo-program liaison” would also have allowed for additional
follow-up with participating institutions. This kind of support would have
made the system easier to use and clarified its importance.
The two main reasons survey respondents said they did not participate in
the program were lack of resources and lack of time. Though it is unlikely
that funding would allow zoos to be paid for their participation, incentives
such as free diagnostic testing might have encouraged more zoos to join the
system. An additional benefit of offering testing at no cost would be data
collection from a larger sample, thus adding power to the analysis of the
sensitivity and specificity of available TB tests for exotic hoofstock. In order
to reduce the time necessary to participate, collaborations with existing zoo-
logical data recording systems could be explored. Currently, many zoos use
ARKS (Animal Record Keeping System) and MedARKS (medical record
keeping). If the relevant information could be extracted from one of these
systems for each institution, data entry on the part of the institution would
be greatly reduced or possibly rendered unnecessary.
One issue that turned out to be a problem was the use of outside contrac-
tors to design, maintain, and host the Web site. When collaboration with
the initial contractor was no longer possible, a second company had to be
found to take over the maintenance and hosting of the Web site. The result
of this transition was a period of 2 months during which the Web site was
unavailable. Ideally, the project would have a dedicated programmer who
would be responsible for this aspect of the system. Having someone on
site would allow for a more tailored Web interface that could be rapidly
updated or changed. This would also provide an additional layer of secu-
rity for the data, as previously the companies maintaining and hosting the
Web site had access to all the information in the database, though contracts
in place detailed LPZ's ownership of the data and the code.
Another important lesson learned with this program was to establish sam-
pling strategies to acquire the necessary sample size for analysis. Several
survey respondents recommended increasing participation and devising
sampling schemes for institutions with few hoofstock. Others suggested
making the program mandatory, perhaps through collaboration with the
AZA's SSPs, which recommend breeding pairs across institutions to maxi-
mize the genetic diversity of endangered species.
