It is very obvious from J White's letter (echo 8/June) that she has never visited - or at least not for many years - visited a wildlife park which on the whole has replaced the old fashioned zoo.

Long gone are the days when bored animals were kept behind bars in cages just pacing back and forth all without any stimulation whatsoever.

I agree those enclosures seemed cruel but things have greatly improved with the change to wildlife parks.

There are now a great many, and even the most dangerous animals can roam outside in large enclosures designed specially for each kind on animal in as natural a setting as possible with long grass and bushes to hide in and trees to climb for those that wish to get off the ground.

They also have large comfortable indoor areas for sleeping or just resting during bad weather where they can be observed behind glass screens without too much disturbance from visitors, which must be much more interesting for young children to see them up close.

I agree that in captivity the animals have no control over their lives but they never go without food or water unlike in the wild where in times of severe drought or floods especially in African and Asian countries they may have to travel many dangerous miles to locate water or food, often dying before they find either.

Also if any of them fell ill or somehow became wounded while living in their natural habitat they would either recover eventually or die a slow agonising death with no help or comfort whatsoever, but in captivity all the keepers know each individual animal in their care and soon get expert help for them when needed.

It is a well established and proven fact that animals on the whole live much longer in captivity than they do in the wild whether they be prey or predator.

The controlled breeding programmes allow any animal - especially endangered species - to be able to give birth to their offspring in the cleanest environments and rear them without them being killed by predators or poachers or dying soon after birth from some unknown illness as expert help is always at hand.

Future generations of these animals are then quite often transferred when old enough to other wildlife parks with similar breeding programmes to introduce new bloodlines to carry on to the next generation or after a great deal of dehumanisation training they are introduced back to the wild in safe areas to carry on living as naturally as possible with more of their own kind.

These measures guarantee that future generations of humans can enjoy these animals in real life instead of learning about them from text books.

There are a great many endangered species of animals at the moment due to humans encroaching on their habitat in one way or another but if all the breeding programmes were stopped - as J White wants then none of these animals would survive in the wild for long and we would lose a great many of them within the next 20 or 30 years.

Nobody on earth could have foreseen this pandemic we are living with at the moment and it is only because of the virus that the wildlife parks are in this sad state when they had to shut and so the money they relied on to feed and care for the animals in their charge was suddenly withdrawn through no fault of their own.

Thousands of people helped out by donating money for the NHS when needed but the NHS did not have any contingency plans either did they! So why should requests for help from wildlife parks be so wrong?

Trying to target the root causes of extinction might eventually save a few species but it would certainly be too late for the majority of these beautiful animals and birds which would have already disappeared by the time any of these measures were put in place all over the world - that is presuming all the foreign governments were in agreement which we all know would never happen anyway.

Heather Lewis

Chandlers Ford