Science / Medicine : Zoo Plays Cupid to Mother Nature

Some might consider it arcane that tape-recorded thunderstorms act as an aphrodisiac for the Majorcan toad.

But not Quentin Bloxam. Nor, one assumes, the toads.

Bloxam is a senior curator at the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, better known locally as, simply, the Jersey Zoo, and he’s spent 25 years learning the amorous secrets of some of nature’s more obscure creatures.

That’s because his employer is no ordinary zoo. Instead of lions, tigers and giraffes, the tenants here are Round Island boas, cheetahs, pink pigeons and partula snails.

Founded 30 years ago by author and naturalist Gerald Durrell, the Jersey Zoo is a pioneer in captive breeding programs meant to preserve rare and endangered species of mammals, birds and reptiles. And it claims the most extensive collection of such species anywhere.

The zoo’s symbol is the dodo, the flightless, turkey-like bird from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius that became extinct in the 17th Century. There’s a Dodo Cafe here, a Dodo Dispatch newsletter and replicas of the strange-looking bird everywhere one gazes on the preserve. They’re reminders of what could happen to 50 other endangered species that call Jersey home if it weren’t for the trust and a growing network of more conventional North American, European and other zoos that now cooperate in captive breeding programs.

Ideally, the goal of these programs is to rebuild the supply of a rare species to the point where it can be reintroduced into the wild. In fact, that’s not practical for most, because the same elements that threatened to make them extinct in the first place still exist in their indigenous homes.

There are exceptions--such as the pink pigeon, which has been bred in captivity and reintroduced to the Maccabbe forest area of Mauritius; or the reddish-maned golden lion tamarin, raised in Jersey and several American zoos and returned recently to Brazil’s Poco das Antas Biological Reserve; and Quentin Bloxam’s Majorcan toads, which have been prospering with the help of his artificial rainstorms and tape-recorded thunder.

It’s not easy being a midwife to Mother Nature, Bloxam said. Take the case of the Round Island boa, indigenous to an island off Mauritius but now believed to be the world’s rarest snake. The boa is threatened to the verge of extinction by rabbits that apparently destroy its eggs and habitat. Early explorers introduced the rabbits to provide for future shipwrecked mariners.

Field workers for the trust captured 11 specimens and transported them to Jersey between 1977 and 1982.

“It took us two years to perfect the management of them,” said Bloxam, who is in charge of the reptile collection. “Then we had to try and get them to breed.”

Dietary experimentation finally worked, and in 1982 the first infant Round Island boas were hatched. They died in a matter of weeks, and it wasn’t until 1985 that more came along.

Bloxam and his team first had to find a substitute for the baby lizards that the tiny snakes would have eaten in the wild, and then force-feed them, a process comparable to spending 90 minutes repeatedly searching for the mouth of a wiggling shoelace.

By two years ago, the Jersey staff had perfected its techniques sufficiently--feeding time was down to 20 minutes per shoelace--that it could afford to ship three of the rare reptiles to a Canadian zoo.

But Bloxam said the snakes died at their new home. “That didn’t please me too much.”

Now he’s about to try again, loaning four snakes from his expanding collection to the Dallas zoo. But this time Bloxam has spent three weeks training a reptile keeper from the Dallas zoo, and the reptile curator is also coming for a two-day introduction to the species.

“I’d like to get somebody else breeding them,” said Bloxam. “I don’t like the fact that we are the only ones.”

A nonprofit operation, the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust operates on a budget of about 1 million British pounds a year, equivalent to $1.6 million at the current rate of exchange. That supports about 1,500 individual animals, birds and reptiles kept on 25 acres of manicured parkland, as well as an ambitious educational program for local schoolchildren and visiting student conservationists.

The trust’s money comes from public admissions to the zoo ($5 for an adult), donations, bequests and proceeds from a gift shop and the Dodo Cafe.

One of its fund-raising gimmicks is to offer its animals for adoption. A “foster parent” pays an annual fee roughly equal to the cost of feeding an animal and in return receives a small brass identifying plaque on its cage. The donor also gets a photograph of the animal and periodic news reports from the zoo on its progress and activities.

Costs range from the equivalent of $800 annually for a lowland gorilla to $12 for a partula snail, from Moorea Island in French Polynesia. And the program is so popular that there is a waiting list to adopt most species.

“At the moment we’ve only got snails available,” Jersey Zoo guide coordinator Michelle Curwood said apologetically.

However, chimed in reptile expert Bloxam, snails do have their advantages. You don’t have to determine the sex of a snail to breed it, for example.

“They’re hermaphrodites,” Bloxam pointed out. “That problem doesn’t matter so long as you have two.”