Bronx Zoo to remove hundreds of animals from Georgia island

<p>The Bronx Zoo is closing an animal preserve on Georgia's St. Catherines Island, moving 435 animals of 46 species to zoos around the country.</p><p>The undeveloped island about 50 miles south of Savannah was home to animals including Madagascan lemurs and the maleo, a turkey-like bird from Indonesia.</p><p>The animals belonged to the Bronx Zoo's Wildlife Conservation Society, which started the Georgia preserve in 1974 with the mission of propagating endangered species in captivity for release in the wild.</p><p>But the mission of zoos has changed, said Richard Lattis, director of the Bronx Zoo. Instead the animals will be displayed in zoos to educate the public about conservation needs.</p><p>"They're ambassadors for their wild cousins," Lattis told the Savannah Morning News. "It's not a herd of whatever that one day will be reintroduced into the wild. You couldn't in all the zoos in the world combined breed enough animals to do that. There's not enough space."</p><p>The Wildlife Survival Center uses 150 of the island's 14,000 acres. About a dozen other programs, including archaeological digs and sea turtle research continue on St. Catherines.</p><p>But Royce Hayes, superintendent for the St. Catherines Island Foundation, said the departure of the Bronx Zoo program is sad. The foundation is a nonprofit group that manages the undeveloped island.</p><p>"I'd rather not talk about it because it makes us all sad not to be continuing in the same direction," he said.</p><p>Bob Lessnau began his career studying infant development in free-ranging lemurs on St. Catherines. He's now a senior biologist at the Wildlife Survival Center and an adjunct professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University.</p><p>"Right now we're still kind of in shock," he said. "It's been disappointing and sad for the staff, But we certainly understand the reasons."</p><p>Ray Chandler, an associate professor of biology at Georgia Southern University, hopes to send six of his students complete projects on the island before the center closes.</p><p>"It's going to be a real loss for the biological community and research community in this region," he said.</p><p>Especially for those studying lemurs, the island was unparalleled. Other zoos often keep only a pair of caged lemurs.</p><p>"At one time we had close to 70 free-ranging lemurs on the island," Lessnau said. "This is the next best thing to Madagascar."</p><p>Some of those lemurs will be going to the Bronx Zoo where a Madagascar exhibit is set to open in 2006. Moving them and the other animals will take about a year, officials said.</p><p>Speaking for the Wildlife Conservation Society, Allison Power said the main purpose of the effort on St. Catherine "was not so much to breed the animals for reintroduction to the wild, but to study how that could work."</p><p>She said experts wanted to study the animals in an open setting like the island, looking at what was successful in breeding.</p><p>"What has happened is that there is less and less of the wild. It's more and more rare to have a habitat that can support even the animals that are there," she said, adding that the Conservation Society is working in 50 countries "to try to save those pockets of wildlife _ and reintroduction of animals is always a backup plan."</p><p>St. Catherine's is being closed because after three decades, "many of the original objectives have been met, in terms of study and propagation. What we've learned at St. Catherine's could help for the future."</p>