Confining animals to zoos for profit ain't great morally either. What percentage of them die each year in transit? (rhetorical question).
I know your statement is a rhetorical question, but allow me to respectfully engage you in debate, since the point you are trying to make is not only way off, and completely inaccurate, but it brings a lot of unnecessary misinformation into this thread. If you are not up for it, I completely understand. I have worked in the zoo planning and design industry for quite some time, and have been involved in some of the most progressive projects in the zoo world. Your statement reads as a talking point of many decades ago, and it has no relativity to current times, but in an effort to educate your perspective, let me offer some clarity on what most modern zoos actually are.
The great majority of zoos are state/government/tax funded, there are no stockholders or clients waiting to pocket a profit. Even world class private zoos, since I have assisted in the design of some of the best ones in the Planet, have done more for conservation and animal quality of life than any Peta or Abolish the zoos advocate (in all honesty, they have done very little other than complain, mostly out of ignorance) Now, I'm obviously referring to world class private facilities, for profit and non profit, not a Texas roadside private zoo (a term we use in the zoo industry to identify horrible places that hold wild animals in extremely poor conditions like Netflix's Tiger King) That is not to say, that there are plenty of state run facilities the world over that are horrible places for the animals, and have no business being in the same sentence as the facilities that are well ran.
Zoos function primarily to educate the public, and provide a much needed link to wildlife found in all corners of the earth. Humans only care about what they understand, and understand only that which they have been in direct contact with. You can't change an individual's mind about dumping plastics in reference to their impact on oceans, if they have never been to the ocean, it just does not work. In the same token, I can't stop someone from purchasing illegal Chinese sexual stimulants made out of tiger bones, found in the form of wine, if they have never encountered this majestic creatures. Your statement also makes it seem like zoos are taking animals from their wild homes, and that my friend is not the case. Modern zoos that have standards and are part of credible organizations (AZA comes to mind) do not engage in this practice unless it is absolutely necessary (meaning, if you take an animal from the wild, you are doing it to assist a breeding program, that is trying to reintroduced the species back into their native environment at some point in time) The majority of the animals that you see in zoos today are the product of these breeding programs. Any sanctioned move of an animal from its native environment into a zoo or animal park is an extremely delicate and complex process, and the last thing in the world anyone wants is for the animal to die or even get sick, the complete opposite of your statement.
Now the zoo industry is very different today than it was 30 or even 20 years ago, it keeps on evolving. In the early 90's in the U.S as an example it was very difficult to find a zoo that actually turned a profit, other than the San Diego Zoo. In 2020 that is hardly the case, a large number of zoos in the U.S, Europe, Asia are actually extremely profitable. However the money that these facilities are taking in is going right back to the zoos, and that is how the can afford multi million dollar expansions, and state of the art exhibits, that are sanctuaries for these animals to live their lives.
In a perfect world we would not need zoos, unfortunately this world if far from that, and we humans have done quite a great job at making sure zoo are the last bastion of hope for many of this species. The animals you know find in zoos are ambassadors to their species, and the message zoo try to convey is loud and clear, time is running out.
