Over the last two decades, zoos worldwide have worked hard to become forces for conservation. Pivotal to this has been the understanding that to be truly effective, institutions can not work in isolation, but must operate as part of a cooperative network, particularly in the selection and management of species.

The world’s more progressive zoos now work closely with each other to decide which species are held in which zoos, and how they are managed. The benefits of this include increased viability and sustainability of zoo populations, and more opportunities to contribute to conserving wildlife.

It calls on individual zoos:

• To shift the use of available space from more common species towards more space for threatened species in coordinated programs.

• To ensure that every animal in the collection has a function within the framework of the objectives of the zoo, and to ensure that conservation goals are an important part of these objectives.

Zoos in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and some of the Pacific Islands, that are members of the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria (ARAZPA), are committed to cooperatively managing their animal collections in ways that promote sustainability and contribute to conservation. Coordination of this is overseen by the Australasian Species Management Program Committee (ASMP), on behalf of the association. Activities are carried out by a network of species management volunteers, who are employees of ARAZPA member institutions. Staff at the ARAZPA office administer this network, on behalf of the ASMP Committee.

At the backbone of this network are a number of advisory groups, each responsible for a particular group or groups of taxa. These Taxon Advisory Groups or TAGs advise institutions on which taxa to hold and in what numbers, and oversee the work of personnel assigned to manage them. Taxon Advisory Groups are discussed further elsewhere in this document.

The principles upon which TAG decisions are based are outlined below.

Larger populations
ARAZPA zoos aim to reduce (and in some cases eliminate) the need to collect animals from the wild and/or to import animals to the region to supplement existing captive populations. The key to improving the sustainability of captive populations is larger population sizes. Sustainability, and therefore larger population sizes, are valuable for:

Species extinct in the wild: for these the importance of sustaining captive stocks is paramount. Keeping larger captive populations increases sustainability, lowering the risk of complete extinction.

Species threatened in the wild: it is important that zoos are not a drain on the remaining wild populations of threatened species. Instead, they should work to make their own populations relatively self-sustaining; they may become an important resource later on. The larger the population, the longer it can last without supplementation from the wild.

Species common in the wild: stocking zoo exhibits with animals collected from the wild may not have an adverse impact on wild populations of many common species. However, even for these taxa, there are often good reasons why managing for sustainability

in captivity is preferable to continual supplementation from wild populations. For instance:

• reduce the capacity of zoos to be involved in captive programs for similar, threatened forms

• leave zoos particularly vulnerable to the impact of sudden wild population decline and/or a change in permitting agency attitudes to wild collection

In addition to large population size, sustainability requires:

• good knowledge and experience of husbandry

• a good founder base for each population.

With these factors in place, careful management of zoo populations can achieve:

• reduced susceptibility to unexpected catastrophes

• reduced susceptibility to chance fluctuations in birth/death rate, or sex-ratio bias

• low rates of inbreeding

• high levels of gene diversity.

The Australasian collection planning process encourages zoos to plan cooperatively the composition of their animal collections, and to coordinate population management across institutions, in a manner that promotes the conditions for sustainability. The key to sustainability for the Australasian region is holding Larger Populations.

Choosing Species for the Australasian Region
Following The World Zoo Conservation Strategy, there are two questions that are important in the process of choosing species for ex situ management in zoos:

1. What species will best serve the broad-based conservation goals of ARAZPA zoos?

2. What are the capabilities and strengths of ARAZPA zoos in regard to their knowledge, experience and resources?

Conservation needs, combined with zoo capabilities and geographic location, are important in species choice for ex situ programs in Australasian zoos.

The Australasian regional collection planning process operates, in general, according to the following series of priorities:

1. Threatened species (by IUCN criteria) have a higher priority than non-threatened species;

2. Species native to the Australasian region will take preference over those from outside this region;

3. Of those species occurring outside this region, species native to Southeast Asia will receive priority over exotic species from other regions.

4. Species for which zoos have husbandry and reproduction experience enjoy a preference, since these are the species for which ex-situ programs are most likely to be successful;

5. Species for which founder stock is already present in zoos have preference above other considerations;

6. Species that play a key role in their habitat enjoy a high priority;

7. Species that represent a high degree of taxonomic uniqueness have a higher priority than species belonging to taxa containing many varied species;

8. Flagship species that can serve as effective ambassadors for nature conservation have preference.

Balancing diversity and sustainability
Keeping species in larger numbers doesn't necessarily mean reducing the diversity of life-forms displayed in ARAZPA zoos. Sustainability increases with increasing population size. Given the limitations on captive space, increasing sustainability may require that the region reduces the total number of species held. This raises the concern that collection planning will lead to zoos displaying fewer and fewer species, negatively impacting on visitor experience. This is not necessarily true. Although the process may lead to fewer species in the region as a whole (at least in the short term), good regional planning should ensure sufficient variety for each zoo to continue displaying a healthy diversity of species. Any resulting convergence in composition between zoo collections is unlikely to matter to most zoo visitors, who are likely to visit only one or two zoos during their lifetime.

In the context of attracting visitors, institutions operating in close proximity may find it valuable to identify a specific niche for themselves in terms of the composition and presentation of the collection. Good regional planning should provide sufficient diversity to achieve this, without zoos having to resort to displaying taxa unique to the whole region. This would be a drain on collective resources, as illustrated by the following example:

Example: The investment required to maintain a display of a few animals in a single zoo within the region can be large, particularly if the group is sustained solely through wild collection or import from outside the region.

Scenario: if Taronga zoo is the only zoo in the region holding small felid species X, and they hold a group of five animals, they should plan to import around five new animals every 10-12 years, to supplement the group. In contrast, if Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide zoos also hold groups of five animals, the region as a whole need only plan to import 1 animal every 10-12 years in order to sustain numbers. (Source: Wilcken, unpublished VORTEX analysis).

The Australasian regional collection planning process therefore encourages members:

1. To consider sustainability above novelty in species selection decisions.

2. Not to plan to hold taxa which do not feature on the plans of any other zoos in the region

3. To preferentially select species which feature on the plans of several zoos within the region.

Prioritising allocation of limited ASMP resources
ASMP resources are limited and are allocated to where they will benefit the Association most.

Conservation program species
Single or multi-institution conservation programs benefit all ARAZPA members by satisfying a major component of the Association's mission statement. ASMP resources are applied to projects of this nature as a priority.

Other species
For taxa which are not the focus of conservation programs, allocating ASMP resources should take into account:

How much the population involved will benefit - the smaller a population gets, the more at risk it is to extinction as a result of chance events. For very small actual or planned population sizes, investing resources in intensive population management or husbandry research is wasteful, as chance becomes the most influential factor in directing population dynamics.

How many member zoos will benefit -managing taxa planned to be held in many institutions will benefit a greater proportion of ARAZPA members than focusing resources on species held in only a few institutions.

The Australasian regional collection planning process therefore does not allocate regional population management resources to taxa that are planned to be held:

• in only one institution

• in more than one institution, but with a total population of fewer than 20 individuals.

Supporting managed programs
Australasia is a small region in terms of captive space. For most taxa held it is not possible to accommodate very large populations. If managed programs for priority species are to reach target population sizes successfully, the available space will need to be used efficiently.

The Australasian regional collection planning process:

1. Encourages members, wherever possible, to replace taxa held which are of low regional priority, with similar, regionally managed taxa.

2. Recommends against the acquisition of new species to the region where they are likely to take up space needed for existing managed programs.

Selecting appropriate management units
[Adapted from the World Zoo Conservation Strategy, p.49]

The choice of the taxonomic unit to be worked with is an important consideration in managed programs. In principle, the "biological species" should offer a sound, basically uniform unit for ex situ programs, since each individual in the species fulfils the biological definition of a species: that is, reproduction between this individual and another of the same species will yield fertile offspring.

The ex situ population of one species should not be unreasonably split into too many geographical or subspecies populations. Each of these individual sub-populations requires its own minimum number of animals; ex situ programs for ten subspecies or geographical forms take up just as much room as do programs for ten species.

Therefore:
The Australasisan regional collection planning process emphasises that programs should be managed at species level unless there is a very clear conservation strategy or scientific or practical reason for doing otherwise. In such cases, management units should be selected to satisfy the goals of the captive program.

Note: ARAZPA's Taxonomy Specialist Advisory Group Convenor assists in determining appropriate management units for the region.

Using computerised collection planning tools - REGASP
To assist cooperative collection planning, the Australasian region has developed a computerised collection planning tool called REGASP (Johnson, 1991). This system is now distributed worldwide as part of the ISIS (International Species Information System) suite of zoo animal management software.

Zoos who subscribe to ISIS maintain their day-to-day animal records on the ARKS (Animal Records Keeping System) program. REGASP articulates with ARKS, extracting a list of animals held in the institution, and presenting it on the REGASP screen as current numbers of males, females and unsexed individuals for each taxon in the collection. Additional information available to zoos on screen includes:

• IUCN status.

• CITES appendix.

• VPC category.

• ESP listing.

• ASMP status and management level (see elsewhere in this document).

• Level of captive management applied in other regions of the world

• TAG-generated regional goals, recommendations and comments for the taxon (see elsewhere in this document)

• Current and planned numbers for other ISIS zoos.

In the context of this information and of institution-specific needs, zoos determine the number of specimens of each taxon they plan to hold, which taxa they aim to replace, which new ones they aim to acquire. They enter this information into their in-house REGASP system. Updated REGASP files are submitted to the central pool of global planning data, accessible by all REGASP users.

ARAZPA encourages all of its members to adopt the REGASP system as the most effective means of sharing collection planning information between zoos.

• Each zoo drafts a strategic collection plan which supports that institution's educational, research and conservation goals.

• Plans are submitted to the ARAZPA office via REGASP, where they are compiled into a "draft regional plan" and circulated to each of the TAGs.

• TAGs review and comment on the draft regional plan in the context of regionally agreed priorities and strategies. They may recommend amendments to institutional plans where this would benefit the region as a whole.

• TAG recommendations and comments are submitted to the ARAZPA office, where they are added to the compilation of institutional plans, and redistributed to member zoos – again via the REGASP system.

• Zoos review their plans, taking into account the draft plans of other zoos, and the comments and recommendations made by the TAGs. Plans are modified as required and a final submission is made to the ARAZPA office.

• The finalised plans of institutional members of ARAZPA are compiled and published in the ASMP Regional Census and Plan.