19/06/2026
Love this news from Costa Rica 🇨🇷
A move away from traditional zoos and towards wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, and conservation. As a wildlife artist, I’m always encouraged to see animals valued in their natural habitats 💚
A step in the right direction for wildlife🐆🌿
Costa Rica just did something that no country has fully done before and the rest of the world should probably be paying attention.
Every zoo in Costa Rica is closing. Not one of them. Not the ones that were already struggling. Every single zoo in the country is being shut down and every captive animal is being relocated to rescue sanctuaries where they can live in conditions that more closely resemble the natural environments they were taken from or born away from. The cages are being emptied. The enclosures are being retired. Costa Rica has decided that keeping wild animals in confinement for human entertainment is not something it wants to be in the business of anymore.
That is a significant decision. It is worth taking seriously on every level.
Let's start with what Costa Rica actually is as a country because the context matters. Costa Rica is a nation that has built its entire national identity around environmental stewardship in a way that very few countries have managed to sustain as actual policy rather than just rhetoric. It abolished its military in 1948 and redirected that funding toward education and health. It now generates the vast majority of its electricity from renewable sources. Roughly 30 percent of its total land area is protected as national parks, wildlife refuges, and biological reserves. A country roughly the size of West Virginia contains approximately 5 percent of the world's total biodiversity. Costa Rica did not end up this way accidentally. It made deliberate policy choices over decades that prioritized the natural world as a national asset worth protecting.
The decision to close all zoos fits within that framework. It is not a sudden reversal. It is the logical extension of a conservation philosophy that has been building for a long time in a country that genuinely treats biodiversity as something more important than a talking point.
The debate around zoos is real and worth engaging with honestly rather than dismissing either side. The case for zoos has historically rested on three arguments. Conservation breeding programs for endangered species. Public education that builds awareness and support for wildlife protection. Research that advances scientific understanding of animal biology and behavior. These are real contributions and some zoos have made genuine differences in the survival of species that might otherwise have gone extinct.
The case against zoos is also real. The psychological and physical toll of captivity on animals, particularly large, intelligent, wide ranging species like elephants, great apes, and big cats, is documented and significant. Animals that evolved to roam hundreds of miles, to have complex social lives, to engage in the full range of behaviors their biology requires, experience captivity as a form of deprivation that no enrichment program fully addresses. The educational argument has also been challenged by research suggesting that zoo visits do not reliably translate into conservation behavior or long term concern for wildlife.
Sanctuaries, the destination for Costa Rica's captive animals, operate on a different model. They do not breed animals for display. They do not prioritize visitor access over animal welfare. They exist to provide the best possible life for animals that cannot be returned to the wild, with space, naturalistic environments, and freedom from the performance demands of a zoo experience.
Costa Rica made a choice. The animals are going to sanctuaries. The zoos are closing. The rest of the world is watching.
Some ideas start in small countries and spread everywhere. This might be one of them.
