Presentation short abstract

This contribution argues that new biobanking practices and genetic technologies in European zoos have the potential to reveal institutional and colonial histories, and furthermore demonstrates how these continue to form the data infrastructure upon which contemporary zoo conservation is based.

Presentation long abstract

This contribution considers zoo biobanking of animal tissues and genetic data as a conservation technology, and argues that tracing animal’s genetic “origins” offers openings into zoo’s institutional and colonial histories. It focuses on the EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria) biobank, which brings together samples from a network of accredited zoos into freezers distributed over four hubs. For conservationists and researchers, the biobank makes available novel genetic information that can be used to inform zoo-based conservation decisions. By for example basing breeding recommendations on the genetic diversity of zoo animals, the biobank is hoped to contribute to keeping threatened species “genetically viable” outside zoo walls. In practice, genetic samples from the biobank especially contribute to determining the “provenance” or “origin” of so-called “founders”: animals that were captured in the wild and then transported to the zoo. Tracing the geographic and genetic origins of founders however not only offers genetic insights: it invites engagement with the circumstances under which animals were brought to zoos, and leads researchers to sample ancestors of zoo animals in natural history collections. In doing so, these genetic methods have the potential to lay bare the institutional and colonial histories of zoos: the colonial networks that allowed them to acquire animals in the wild, and their exchange with natural history museums. I contend that these new biobanking practices and sequencing technologies not only can reveal these histories, but demonstrates how they continue to form the data infrastructure upon which contemporary zoo conservation practices are based.