Captive breeding

Captive breeding is the process of breeding animals in controlled environments within well-defined settings, such as wildlife reserves, zoos and other commercial and noncommercial conservation facilities. Sometimes the process includes the release of individual organisms to the wild, when there is sufficient natural habitat to support new individuals or when the threat to the species in the wild is lessened. Captive breeding programs facilitate biodiversity and may save species from extinction. Release programs have the potential for diluting genetic diversity and fitness.

Captive breeding has been successful in the past. The Pere David's deer was successfully saved through captive breeding programs after almost being hunted to extinction in China. Captive-breeding is employed by modern conservationists, and has saved a wide variety of species from extinction, ranging from birds (e.g., the pink pigeon), mammals (e.g., the pygmy hog), reptiles (e.g., the Round Island boa) and amphibians (e.g., poison arrow frogs). Their efforts were successful in reintroducing the Arabian oryx (under the auspices of the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society), in 1963. The Przewalski's horse was also successfully reintroduced in the wild after being bred in captivity.

The breeding of endangered species is coordinated by cooperative breeding programs containing international studbooks and coordinators, who evaluate the roles of individual animals and institutions from a global or regional perspective. These studbooks contain information on birth date, gender, location, and lineage (if known), which helps determine survival and reproduction rates, number of founders of the population, and inbreeding coefficients. A species coordinator reviews the information in studbooks and determines a breeding strategy that would produce most advantageous offspring.

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