ANIMALS - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 89

by the quantity and quality of their habitats and secondarily by the intensity of human
exploitation.
All of which brings us full circle. My assessment of captive populations raised under
the fourth rationale is that, from the perspective of in situ conservation, they are identical
in effect to those raised under the third (commercial) rationale, which is to say, neutral.
If we want to conserve animals in the wild, we need to focus on the wild. 39 Decisions
about the wisdom of captive breeding need to be made by considering human demands
for the product and welfare of the captive animals themselves, rather than on presumed
effects on their wild cousins. It would seem, based on observations of these animals in
captivity, fundamental biological characteristics, and the economic data available thus far,
that the case for farming bears remains strong. 40 But those same criteria suggest that the
long and frustrating enterprise of farming musk deer—fundamentally an attempt to mold
these secretive and twitchy micro-deer into trusty assembly-line producers of traditional
Chinese medicine—be put out of its misery.