Zoos — His­tory and reviews

06.03.2016

After a short bus ride from down­town Welling­ton I arrive at the Zoo in New­town, the sub­urb that is located in the hills Welling­ton is built on. Together with neigh­bour­ing New­town Park the Zoo is part of a green belt that runs over these hills at this side of town. It has been six­teen years since my pre­vi­ous visit to Welling­ton Zoo and I expect to see a lot of changes, although I doubt if my rec­ol­lec­tion of that visit is spot on.

Any­way, the Asian small-​clawed otter enclo­sure and the gib­bon island directly after the entrance are exactly how I remem­ber it. Espe­cially the island for the white-​cheeked gib­bons and the island for the brown capuchins and spi­der mon­keys (black-​handed as well as white-​fronted) pro­vide a nat­u­ral­is­tic habi­tat with plenty of veg­e­ta­tion, although a few really large trees would make at least the two gib­bons (male and female) happy I think, for allow­ing them to brachi­ate through the tree­tops. Now they have to include the ropes and wooden poles in their rush through the exhibit. The water-​filled moat around both the islands is being super­vised by Aus­tralian pel­i­can, as police offi­cers in their black-​and-​white plumage.

Oppo­site the gib­bon island the noc­tur­nal house, called The Twi­light, houses kiwi and tuatara. It is basi­cally a walk-​through exhibit where you can see, if your eyes are up to it, the Zoo’s three male North Island brown kiwi and two of their tuatara. The lat­ter are some­times called ‘liv­ing fos­sils’, as they are the only liv­ing mem­bers of an ancient order of rep­tile that evolved mil­lions of years ago. Tuatara live their lives in the ‘slow lane’ and can grow very old. Peo­ple think they can become 100 and more. The old­est Tuatara at the Zoo is over 50 years old. Two of the tuatara are trained as con­tact ani­mals, which means that there’s a chance you can meet them around the Zoo some­where while han­dled by a Vis­i­tor Ranger.

Another mixed-​species exhibit is sit­u­ated on the same side of the foot­path as The Twi­light, oppo­site the other pri­mate island. Boli­vian squir­rel mon­key together with agouti are kept in what I would call a semi-​closed exhibit, mean­ing that the ani­mals are sep­a­rated from the vis­i­tors on the lower part by glass, while the upper part con­sists of wire mesh. Sep­a­rated from the squir­rel mon­key the build­ing also has cotton-​top tamarin on display.

Next I pass the Green Zoo — an inter­ac­tive exhibit that explains about being respon­si­ble and sus­tain­able con­sid­er­ing your impact on the envi­ron­ment — and have a look at the area ded­i­cated to New Zealand’s native species, Meet the Locals it is called or He Tuku Aroha in Maori lan­guage. This sec­tion was opened on 22 Octo­ber 2015 and is designed for vis­i­tors to expe­ri­ence what New Zealand is like. The small foot­path winds uphill along wild and domes­tic indige­nous species such as lit­tle blue pen­guin (Eudyp­tula minor), Finnish Lan­drace sheep, kunekune pig, weta and ends at the kea walk-​through aviary that is still under con­struc­tion and due for open­ing in 2017.

The Zoo acts as a res­cue cen­tre for the world’s small­est pen­guin they keep at Pen­guin Point near the entrance of this NZ area. None of them have been born in cap­tiv­ity, but each was res­cued from a life-​threatening sit­u­a­tion in the wild, either eye-​related issues or flip­per trauma due to being tan­gled badly in fish­ing gear. This impaired their hunt­ing abil­i­ties and thus sur­vival in the wild. They are well taken care of as they have access to a nice pool with veg­e­ta­tion on the banks that resem­bles the veg­e­ta­tion along New Zealand’s coast­line. The boat that ser­vices as shel­ter is per­haps a bit over­done, although in the wild the birds may seek shel­ter at night under boats that lie on the shore.

The Farm with the sheep and kunekune pigs, but also with bees, rab­bits, and chick­ens, has a barn area where vis­i­tors can learn more about how we rely on ani­mals for prod­ucts like wool, honey, meat and milk. There’s also a regen­er­at­ing bush in which 4,000 native plants were planted to attract and sup­port the native wildlife which live in the Zoo’s sur­round­ings. It could be that my expec­ta­tions of the mes­sage to be pro­vided by a zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity are mis­guided, but at the Farm I miss the story about the con­se­quences of the mas­sive amounts of ani­mal prod­ucts we pro­duce and con­sume world­wide — the impact on bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tems. Unless I over­looked such vital infor­ma­tion which is rel­e­vant for the mes­sage a zoo should get across, this part fails to impress me. This is not the case at the final stage of the Meet the Locals sec­tion where some lesser known locals are intro­duced includ­ing grand skinks, Otago skinks and Maud Island frogs. There it is explained how the Zoo is a con­ser­va­tion hub within New Zealand. Unfor­tu­nately, the kea aviary is still under con­struc­tion, but the size is very promis­ing. It will allow these smart moun­tain par­rots, that use tools to get food and are capa­ble of solv­ing com­plex puz­zles, to show nor­mal behav­iour — fly­ing around. As this will be a walk-​through aviary there will be an access point on the other side as well, that is near the Suma­tran tiger enclosure.

At the moment the path ends here, so I return to the Meet the Locals entrance and turn towards the black-​and-​white ruffed lemurs oppo­site the cur­rent kea exhibit. They keep only two spec­i­mens of this Crit­i­cally Endan­gered pri­mate species. The social struc­ture of the species varies from large groups to pairs in the wild, so keep­ing just two of them is not unnat­ural. The enclo­sure type is a bit old-​school I would say, with wire mesh fences at the front except for the lower part where there are view­ing win­dows. Nowa­days, lemur enclo­sures are mostly pre­sented as walk-​through exhibits, but as I am not in favour of close encoun­ters and touch­ing I pre­fer the old-​school type with much enrich­ment and veg­e­ta­tion like the one Welling­ton Zoo has built.

Mean­while the foot­path has reached a rather steep slope here. Most of the paths are gen­tly slop­ing, but some are steep enough to make even a healthy adult walk slowly ?. As said, the Zoo is sit­u­ated on one of the hills in the Welling­ton area, so a lit­tle effort was to be expected while explor­ing the grounds.

Before I go fur­ther uphill to the sun bear and Suma­tran tiger ter­ri­tory I have a brief look at the golden lion tamarin exhibit. The tamarin are tem­porar­ily not on dis­play, because just recently a new male has arrived from Bronx Zoo, USA, and was intro­duced to the Zoo’s female. The Zoo hopes they will con­tribute to the inter­na­tional con­ser­va­tion breed­ing pro­gramme, but to achieve this they first have to get used to each other back­stage. The Mini Mon­key house, where sep­a­rate from the golden lion tamarin also pygmy mar­mosets are housed, com­prises lots of veg­e­ta­tion in a nat­u­ral­is­tic habi­tat. The pygmy mar­mosets share their habi­tats with Green Iguanas.

The two sun bears are cur­rently the only bears held in a zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity in New Zealand. They have access to a large uphill sit­u­ated enclo­sure with many boul­ders and a water­fall. To com­pen­sate for the lack of veg­e­ta­tion addi­tional enrich­ment fea­tures are pro­vided, such as tree trunks and wooden plat­forms, to mimic their orig­i­nal habi­tat in the trop­i­cal forests of South­east Asia. One of the bears, born in the wild, was res­cued from out­side a store in Cam­bo­dia in 1996. He came to Welling­ton Zoo in 2004 as part of the regional Malayan Sun Bear breed­ing programme.

Next to the bear exhibit there are two tiger enclo­sures for the Suma­tran tiger cou­ple. These young tigers are poten­tial part­ners within the breed­ing pro­gramme, but are kept sep­a­rate and intro­duced slowly. The main and largest enclo­sure, although still much too small for an ani­mal with such a large hunt­ing ter­ri­tory as the tiger, is equipped with all fea­tures a big cat could wish for — a vari­ety of veg­e­ta­tion that pro­vide shade when needed, trees to sat­isfy its scratch­ing behav­iour, a pond for a cool dip, high level obser­va­tion posts and sev­eral shel­ters. The other enclo­sure is smaller and hardly vis­i­ble from any view­ing position.

The high­est point of the grounds has two ded­i­cated areas, one for African species and one for Aus­tralian ani­mals. Com­ing from the sun bears I start my tour around this part of the Zoo at the the mixed-​species exhibit with giraffe, ostrich, hel­meted guinea fowl and a large herd of nyala. It’s a large dry savan­nah type enclo­sure with an obser­va­tion hut with a thatched roof and in one cor­ner a fake African vil­lage to con­tribute to the make-​believe Africa expe­ri­ence. In con­trast to many of the bar-​less enclo­sures I have seen so far, and much to my sur­prise, the ser­val and cara­cal that are kept across from the savan­nah area have not only wire mesh fences all around but a wire mesh net­ting as a roof as well. This is not per se a neg­a­tive fea­ture, as long as the needs of the species are met. But for species that like to climb trees and pre­fer high level obser­va­tion or rest­ing posts, or like to swing around in tree­tops, a wire mesh roof could impair their nat­ural behav­iour. Cre­at­ing a roof in an exhibit nor­mally means less height and no large trees available.

A lit­tle fur­ther along the path and neigh­bour­ing the cara­cal, another feline species that has the savan­nah as its native habi­tat can be found, the chee­tah. This fastest land mam­mal has an open top enclo­sure at its dis­posal, that mim­ics a dry savan­nah. Partly due to the size of the enclo­sure, and partly because of the slop­ing grounds, a chee­tah that will retire uphill will be invis­i­ble for visitors.

The enor­mous enclo­sure for the small troop of hamadryas baboons, seven to be exact, that fol­lows on the left when I con­tinue my tour, is most impres­sive. Too large to even con­sider cre­at­ing a roof, the fences have a spe­cial rim that should keep the baboons from break­ing out. It’s unlike the crowded baboon rock you’ll see in many Euro­pean zoos. This enclo­sure with its slop­ing grounds is rather bare with some large boul­ders and the odd shrub, and it takes a few moments before I spot my first baboon.

I’m in for a sur­prise when I fol­low the path into the Aus­tralian out­back sec­tion, called Neigh­bours. There’s a free roam­ing emu replac­ing the omnipresent pea­cocks in Euro­pean zoos. I’m on my guard while pro­ceed­ing. Not only because this is for the first time I expe­ri­ence a close encounter pos­si­bil­ity with an emu, but also because I’ve heard about the dam­age an ostrich can cause when attack­ing a per­son. Com­mon ostriches deliver slash­ing kicks with their pow­er­ful feet, armed with long claws, with which they can dis­em­bowel or kill a per­son with a sin­gle blow. And an emu is just a small ostrich or not. See for yourself:

Other species in the Aus­tralia sec­tion are the dingo, the inevitable East­ern grey kan­ga­roo and the wal­laby, as well as four Tas­man­ian dev­ils that came to the Zoo in 2013, for the first time since the 1920s. Welling­ton Zoo sup­ports the Save the Tas­man­ian Devil Pro­gram as of Decem­ber 2013 to save the species from extinc­tion due to the Devil Facial Tumour Dis­ease — a rare con­ta­gious viral can­cer that reduced wild Tas­man­ian Devil pop­u­la­tions by about 80%. Within the pro­gramme the con­tribut­ing zoos work together to cre­ate a healthy insur­ance pop­u­la­tion, that is cru­cial for repop­u­lat­ing Tas­ma­nia once the dis­ease has been elim­i­nated in the wild.

When leav­ing the Neigh­bours sev­eral African species are wait­ing ahead, of which the por­cu­pine and meerkat are the least inter­est­ing. The chim­panzee troop of 10, how­ever, is one of the largest in Aus­trala­sia. They have a walled out­door enclo­sure with lots of arti­fi­cial enrich­ment, such as ropes, wooden poles and plat­forms, and a water-​filled moat on the visitor’s side (see also video). And if it wasn’t for the wall the chimps would have a mag­nif­i­cent view on the city, but for­tu­nately they can climb upon a plat­form to enjoy the views. It’s clear that the exhibit can do with some addi­tional veg­e­ta­tion — a few trees and shrubs will take away the dull­ness of the grassy pad­dock. Per­haps the enclo­sure update that is expected to be com­pleted mid to late 2018 will make the chimp habi­tat more naturalistic.

The last African species on my tour is the one with which it all began in 1906 when ‘King Dick’, a young African lion, was donated to the city by the Bostock and Womb­well Cir­cus (see His­tory). Nowa­days the Zoo hosts five lions, but it is not actu­ally a pride of five. The three females are kept sep­a­rate from the two males to avoid any aggres­sion, because the gen­der groups do not like each other that much. The some­what cir­cu­lar out­door enclo­sure has got a large rock for­ma­tion in the mid­dle that pro­vides shadow, shel­ter and a high level obser­va­tion plat­form. But fur­ther to this it is not very spectacular.

Welling­ton Zoo is not much dif­fer­ent from other zoos world­wide regard­ing their ani­mal col­lec­tion. They made a brave deci­sion in the 1980s to reduce the num­ber of species and focus on endan­gered species instead of the com­mon ones. But the choices of the species they keep are very sim­i­lar to choices made at other zoos. Espe­cially species that are attrac­tive for the poten­tial vis­i­tor, for instance renowned and dan­ger­ous such as tigers or lions, or with an extra­or­di­nar­ily anatomy like a giraffe, or sup­pos­edly cud­dly like lemurs, and of course apes always increase vis­i­tor num­bers. Thus, when I make my way to the exit it’s not a sur­prise to find a red panda exhibit on my right hand side. It’s a nice exhibit with a lot of veg­e­ta­tion includ­ing a few large trees that offer great sleep­ing places for the small car­ni­vore with the thick red hairy coat from Asia whose diet con­sists mainly (98%) of bamboo.

Like many zoos with a long his­tory and there­fore many changes in the col­lec­tion as well as in lay­out and build­ings, they arrived at a in-​between-​solution of how to present the ani­mal col­lec­tion. Here at Welling­ton Zoo I saw three clearly defined areas with ani­mals from a cer­tain geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin, New Zealand, Africa and Aus­tralia. In addi­tion they have grouped their pri­mate species from three con­ti­nents with noc­tur­nal species as neigh­bours. The four non-​primate species from Asian ori­gin, Suma­tran tiger, sun bear, red panda and small-​clawed otter, are not really grouped I would say, they are more or less fill­ing the gaps. All in all I think it is not too con­fus­ing for the igno­rant vis­i­tor, also because the geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin is men­tioned on the infor­ma­tion pan­els. The species con­ser­va­tion sta­tus is pro­vided accord­ing the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, next to a brief descrip­tion of other species specifics. What is really dis­ap­point­ing is the lack of the sci­en­tific names of the species, on the infor­ma­tion pan­els as well as on the web­site. Apart from this obvi­ous flaw from edu­ca­tional point of view, the web­site is a good source of infor­ma­tion on the Zoo’s species, includ­ing the con­ser­va­tion needs and the efforts the Zoo make to ful­fil those needs.

06.03.2016

06.03.2016

Well-​mannered chimpanzee

Chimps are well-​known for their abil­ity to use tools for col­lect­ing food, for instance by pok­ing a branch in a ter­mite hill and col­lect those juicy deli­cious ter­mites. This chimp at Welling­ton Zoo takes this to another level and shows how it can drink more dig­ni­fied by using a tool.

Small-​clawed otters

These two Asian small-​clawed otters have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion about the sun, obvi­ously. While one of them is hid­ing in the shadow, the other is wal­low­ing in the warmth of the sun — or he could just be itchy.

Directions

Direc­tions to Welling­ton Zoo

The Zoo has lim­ited car park­ing in the vicin­ity, there­fore they encour­age you to catch the bus.

Address:
200 Daniell Street
New­town, Welling­ton
New Zealand

pub­lic transport

• Bus no. 10 departs from Welling­ton Rail­way Station

• Bus no. 23 departs from from Mairangi via Kel­burn and Lambton Quay

Visit Metlink for bus depar­ture times.

by bicy­cle

As Welling­ton is built in a hilly land­scape and New­town, where you will find the Zoo, is sit­u­ated against one of the hills, you’re look­ing at a cou­ple of hun­dred metres of stren­u­ous ped­alling when you come from down­town Welling­ton. But hey, this is New Zealand. Let us keep this city clean and use an envi­ron­men­tal friendly mode of trans­porta­tion. There are sev­eral bicy­cle shops that have rentals, as well as Base Back­pack­ers on Kent Terrace.

by car

From the city in less than 10 min­utes — fol­low the brown ‘zoo’ signs. Lim­ited free park­ing. There­fore it can be dif­fi­cult to find a car park on busy days, and you are encour­aged to park a lit­tle fur­ther away and walk up to the Zoo. Or catch the bus!

Get direc­tions

Show the options

Avoid high­ways
Avoid toll roads
Km Miles

From : --  Choose source      --Wellington Zoo or

To : --  Choose destination   --Wellington Zoo or

11.03.2016

After a refresh­ing morn­ing rain I arrive at the Zoo entrance when the sky is clear­ing and the tem­per­a­ture reaches a nice 25°C.

I decide to go left after I entered the Zoo grounds and leave the giraffe, zebra and ostrich be in their impres­sively large Pride­lands area, in par­tic­u­lar because the pas­sage­way is closed due to ongo­ing con­struc­tion work. There­fore I plan to approach this area from the other direc­tion, prob­a­bly just after lunch. On the left the first enclo­sure houses Asian small-​clawed otter in a mul­ti­level rocky envi­ron­ment with a creek that forms small ponds on var­i­ous lev­els. The small water­fall, the bam­boo shrubs and a few trees com­plete the imi­ta­tion of the nat­ural sur­round­ings of the small­est of the otter sub­fam­ily (Lutrinae).

In the next-​door exhibit, the red panda occupy not the obvi­ous cir­cu­lar exhibit as you see in so many zoos nowa­days, but a more elon­gated enclo­sure this time. A small stream partly sur­rounds an area with large shrubs and shel­ters where the three red pan­das can sleep and hide, while a high wall pre­vents too much expo­sure of these Endan­gered red furry car­ni­vores whose diet con­sists of 98% bamboo.

Sig­nage and infor­ma­tion

The infor­ma­tion pan­els do not com­prise a lot of graph­ics to explain species’ habi­tat, feed­ing behav­iour or other pecu­liar­i­ties. Only a few con­tain geo­graph­i­cal depic­tion of the species’ ori­gin. The con­ser­va­tion sta­tus is not always men­tioned, and when it is, the source is obvi­ously the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, but not stated as such.

Apart from the pan­els at the enclo­sures, sev­eral other types of info pan­els can be found when tour­ing the premises. There are pan­els that besides over­all con­ser­va­tion infor­ma­tion give tips on what you can do your­self to reduce threats to nature.

Auck­land Zoo has three Suma­tran tigers that swap between enclo­sures so they can smell where the oth­ers have been mark­ing, eat­ing and sleep­ing. There are two enclo­sures; one of them is a deep pit with a really large and high rear wall. Both enclo­sures have jungle-​like fea­tures with ponds and lots of veg­e­ta­tion. In one of them there’s a scratch­ing pole — just as they sell them for domes­tic cats, only larger and more sturdy and solid I assume.

Instead of con­tin­u­ing towards the Aussie Walk­a­bout I retrace my steps from the Tiger Ter­ri­tory to the otters and move on along Darwin’s eatery on the upward path to another combo of red panda and Asian small-​clawed otters, who enjoy a healthy meal of fish-​heads (see video).

Then I reach The Coast, which is one of the six habi­tats of Te Wao Nui (The Liv­ing Realm) that cov­ers about 4 hectare of the zoo grounds. It’s a total con­cept that takes the vis­i­tor on a jour­ney along New Zealand’s vari­ety of fauna and flora. The art­works under­pin the sto­ry­line and con­tribute to the expe­ri­ence. The jour­ney starts at The Coast and winds through a num­ber of enclo­sures includ­ing The Islands, The High Coun­try, The For­est, The Night and The Wet­lands, that all fea­ture indige­nous species.

The Coast was designed to recre­ate a New Zealand Coastal ecosys­tem fea­tur­ing a beach and a large pool for Cal­i­for­nia sea lion and native Fur Seal (kekeno in Maori lan­guage; Arc­to­cephalus forsteri), fea­tur­ing an enor­mous under­wa­ter view­ing win­dow, and an aviary for lit­tle blue pen­guins and other native shore­birds. The Cal­i­for­nia sea lions on dis­play were born at Auck­land Zoo in the 1990s and will be taken care of for the rest of their lives. And although not found in New Zealand waters, they face many of the same threats as their New Zealand cousins and there­fore are as good an ambas­sador for bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tem health as a native marine mam­mal. See one such ambas­sador fly through the fil­tered salt water tank with a cir­cu­lat­ing supply:

The walk-​through aviary for lit­tle blue pen­guins (Eudyp­tula minor), the world’s small­est pen­guins, com­prises other shore­birds as well. That explains the wire mesh roof — to keep the spot­ted shag (Pha­lacro­co­rax punc­ta­tus) inside for instance. Austin, as the spot­ted shag of the Zoo is called, seems to be quite a char­ac­ter accord­ing the Zoo’s web­site, but I don’t spot him nor any other shore­bird — if any.

I post­pone my visit to the other New Zealand habi­tats of Te Wao Nui and turn right when I leave The Coast to go and have a look at the Africa sec­tion. This con­sists of the Hippo River and Pride­lands. The name hippo river is easy to under­stand when I see an enclo­sure with two hip­popota­muses in a pool from where a rivulet flows along other enclo­sures, pro­vid­ing an ade­quate envi­ron­ment for greater flamin­gos — sup­pos­edly the only flock in Aus­trala­sia. But the name Pride­lands doesn’t ring a bell, at least with me. It is a savan­nah like area that pro­vides a home for chee­tah, white rhi­noc­eros, spring­bok, giraffe, zebra and ostrich. Pride­lands is tem­porar­ily closed due to the recon­struc­tion that is about to be com­pleted at Easter. So, also the approach from this direc­tion doesn’t deliver any views on the sec­tion where the giraffe, zebra and ostrich live together.

But first back to the entrance of the Africa sec­tion. That is the place where you can see the ser­val, while on the other side of the foot­path two hip­popota­muses enjoy their rather large pool that allows them to sub­merge and swim around. Despite quite good breed­ing results it has been decided to phase out the hip­pos. So for how long these pachy­derms can be seen here in Auck­land is uncer­tain (see also the video). The hippo pool can be con­sid­ered either the begin­ning or the end of a rivulet which I cross sev­eral times pro­gress­ing through ‘Africa’.

Before I reach the Asian ele­phant enclo­sure and the nearby Water­ing Hole where I have a quick lunch, I first pass the hamadryas baboon exhibit with a ‘baboon hill’ instead of the ‘baboon rock’ you’ll see in many other zoos. The grassy pad­dock and the small hill would suit many other ground-​dwelling species, also pri­mates such as geladas, also called bleed­ing heart mon­keys. The lat­ter you see less often in zoos, but both species are con­sid­ered Least Con­cern accord­ing the IUCN Red List. This means that even when they switch to keep­ing geladas (as they have done years ear­lier from chacma baboons to hamadryas baboons) the pri­mates are there just to rep­re­sent the order of pri­mates in the Africa sec­tion instead of pro­vid­ing a real con­tri­bu­tion to ex-​situ species con­ser­va­tion. Because then they should have cho­sen a more endan­gered species, in my opin­ion. The chee­tahs inhabit a not so large enclo­sure with indeed a savannah-​like look. The slightly undu­lat­ing grounds pro­vides plenty of shel­ters but not a good observation/​resting post. Although there’s a pole with two high level plat­forms I doubt if a chee­tah will be able to reach those plat­forms, because the pole has a smooth metal sur­face and the first plat­form is at least 5 metres above ground.

The two female Asian ele­phants, of which one is a res­i­dent since 1990, have their enclo­sures sit­u­ated in the cor­ner of the grounds tucked away as a sur­prise behind the Africa sec­tion. The out­door exhibit is spa­cious and includes a nice pool with a large can­vas as sun­shade close to one of the view­ing ter­races. More dis­tant from the pub­lic there’s a large pad­dock where I see both the ele­phants wan­der, enjoy­ing the peace and quiet atmos­phere over there. The ele­phant house is noth­ing more than a sta­ble that pro­vides nei­ther suf­fi­cient space for the pachy­derms nor any enrich­ment. Vis­i­tors are not allowed to enter the ele­phant house, but have view­ing access via a large win­dow. It’s no won­der that the lat­est Zoo devel­op­ment plan ‘Nearer to Nature, 2016 – 2026′ antic­i­pates improve­ment of these indoor facilities.

From the local Water­ing Hole, as the café is called, where I revi­talise myself I cross again the hippo rivulet and arrive at the enclo­sure that houses two female lionesses. It is a vegetation-​rich exhibit with a hill that can be con­sid­ered a high level obser­va­tion post, while it cre­ates a shel­tered rear side where the lionesses can eas­ily hide from the pub­lic. The water-​filled moat on the visitor’s side makes this another good exam­ple of the Hagen­beck prin­ci­ple of enclo­sure design — bar-​less and nat­u­ral­is­tic. Two lionesses do not form a pride, and to be hon­est the size of the enclo­sure doesn’t give me the idea that more than two can be hosted, but for the animal’s sake a more robust social struc­ture includ­ing a male would per­haps be bet­ter. On the other hand, the enrich­ment and excite­ment pro­vided by the mixed-​species exhibit with white rhino and espe­cially spring­bok within sight of the lionesses makes it a bit more nat­ural again. The white rhino and spring­bok are the last species of the Pride­lands I can observe, because the foot­path ter­mi­nates at this point due to the con­struc­tion work that will be ready in a few weeks time. A good moment for me to return to the native fauna and flora sec­tion, Te Wao Nui.

New Zealan­ders are or should be proud of their native species, that all have basi­cally only a lim­ited geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and there­fore are eas­ily prone to a reduc­tion of their pop­u­la­tion size. Hav­ing such species on dis­play and telling the vis­i­tors about the plight of some of them and the neces­sity of con­ser­va­tion can­not be applauded enough. They did a mar­vel­lous job in achiev­ing this here at Auck­land Zoo. The sev­eral walk-​through exhibits, includ­ing a never seen before [by me] kea walk-​through aviary, with infor­ma­tion pan­els makes this place a won­der­ful edu­ca­tional facil­ity. And it’s not just about the well-​known and inevitable NZ species such as the kiwi, kea or tuatara. The For­est for instance is an absolute great enclo­sure sit­u­ated on a densely forested hill­side with birds such as the tui, New Zealand pigeon (kereru or kukupa in Maori lan­guage), North Island kaka and Reischek’s para­keet (Cyanoram­phus hochstet­teri) which is nest­ing under­ground in bur­rows. The noc­tur­nal house called The Night with brown kiwi (Apteryx man­telli) on dis­play is more or less part of The Wet­lands where other habi­tat spe­cific species can be found. The Zoo takes part in the Depart­ment of Conservation’s kiwi recov­ery pro­gramme called Oper­a­tion Nest Egg (O.N.E). This pro­gramme involves tak­ing kiwi eggs from the wild, hatch­ing them at the Zoo, and then keep­ing them on predator-​free islands until they are grown, before releas­ing them into the wild (more on kiwi con­ser­va­tion). Other bird species to be spot­ted in Te Wao Nui are the bell­bird (kori­mako), blue duck (whio), takahe, and red-​crowned para­keet (kakariki).

Hav­ing learnt quite a lot about New Zealand’s native fauna I con­tinue to the Orang­utan Trail that guides me along two grassy out­door enclo­sures with arti­fi­cial enrich­ment fea­tures such a wooden climb­ing frames, plat­forms, ropes and hard to reach feed­ing boxes. Three of the six Bornean orang­utans are cur­rently on tour to zoos in the United States of Amer­ica (L.A. Zoo and Busch Gar­dens in Florida) as part of an inter­na­tional breed­ing pro­gramme sched­ule. Con­sid­er­ing the very small indoor enclo­sure the three orang­utans that are left will not com­plain I sup­pose. But rede­vel­op­ment of the orang­utan enclo­sures is sched­uled as part of the ‘Nearer to Nature’ plan. Dur­ing the sec­ond phase (2018−2020) of this 10-​year plan they will develop Wild Asia, bring­ing together their species of the south-​east Asian rain­forests: small-​clawed otter, sia­mang, tiger and Bornean orang­utan. Those species are now some­what scat­tered over the premises. I guess they will give the red panda a place as well in this new Asia sec­tion. Wild Asia will cre­ate more immer­sion exhibits — that is the cur­rent state-​of-​the-​art for zoo enclo­sures — to pro­vide the vis­i­tor with a bet­ter experience.

From the orang­utan to the species of South Amer­ica I pass along the ring-​tailed lemurs that have a small patch of land at their dis­posal with plenty of veg­e­ta­tion and some addi­tional enrich­ment. In the South Amer­ica sec­tion they have macaws, Gala­pa­gos tor­toises, cotton-​top tamarins, pygmy mar­mosets and quite a few other trop­i­cal species on dis­play, but the absolute high­light here is the ele­vated wooden board­walk that guides you through a forested area. There I hear on my right Boli­vian squir­rel mon­keys, but due to the dense veg­e­ta­tion I have trou­ble spot­ting them. On the left golden lion tamarin share their nice bushy, bar-​less and open top out­door exhibit with agouti. A bit fur­ther along the board­walk I have an excel­lent view on the mar­vel­lous island for the black-​handed spi­der mon­keys (Ate­les geof­froyi) from one of the shel­ters near the board­walk. The spi­der mon­keys seem to enjoy their moated exhibit as they are explor­ing the many trees and shrubs to their heart’s con­tent (see video). Com­pared to this, the sia­mang enclo­sure on the other side of the board­walk is less impres­sive. It is sur­rounded on all sides, includ­ing the roof, by wire mesh net­ting and for this gib­bon species that lives in the for­est canopy in the wild the height of the enclo­sure will be disappointing.

The final sec­tion of my visit is the one for species of New Zealand’s big neigh­bour, Aus­tralia. The Aussie Walk­a­bout is all walk-​through, with emu and wal­laby in a mixed-​species exhibit and rain­bow lori­keet in their own aviary. In New Zealand the rain­bow lori­keet are con­sid­ered a pest, because they com­pete with native NZ bird species for food and habi­tat. Quite under­stand­able, the Tas­man­ian dev­ils, with their rep­u­ta­tion of being fierce and vio­lent, are not to be vis­ited in their enclo­sure. These Crit­i­cally Endan­gered ani­mals have sev­eral nice out­door exhibits at their dis­posal though. I’ve seen quite a few of them as road kill in Tas­ma­nia, but luck­ily the one I see lying here is well-​protected and fast asleep.

Auck­land Zoo has gone to great lengths to present New Zealand’s native fauna and flora in the best way. They under­stand the real value of zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity and appre­ci­a­tion can­not be big enough for their approach. The New Zealand sec­tion fits in nicely with the group­ing of the ani­mal col­lec­tion, which is basi­cally geo­graph­i­cally. Of course at a place like Auck­land Zoo dat­ing back from the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury you’ll still find the odd one out: the Asian ele­phants behind the Africa sec­tion; the sia­mang near the South Amer­i­can pri­mate species; and the ring-​tailed lemur, meerkat and por­cu­pine sep­a­rated from the huge Africa sec­tion by sev­eral Asia enclo­sures. But as con­struc­tion work and improve­ment are both inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Auck­land Zoo, these minor flaws in the group­ing of their col­lec­tion will be solved. If not with the cur­rent devel­op­ment plan, than with the next one.

Kiwi conservation

The fight to save the kiwi

New Zealand’s for­est used to be home to mil­lions of kiwi. Now there are only 68,000 left.

Natalie Clark, kiwi keeper at Auck­land Zoo, and Ray Wal­ters, for­mer ranger at Tir­i­tiri Matangi island, have been fight­ing to save their national bird from extinc­tion in the wild.

Should We Kill One Species to Save Another?

Is it fair to kill inva­sive species which humans have intro­duced? When peo­ple move around the world, many of their favourite — and not so favourite — ani­mals tag along for the ride. From cane toads through to rats, cats and cray­fish, so-​called ‘inva­sive species’ can destroy ecosys­tems and kill off native wildlife. Crowd­Science lis­tener Jude Kirkham wants to know if erad­i­cat­ing these invaders is justified.

Make New Zealand preda­tor free by 2050

One coun­try deter­mined to do some­thing about inva­sive species is New Zealand, where rats, stoats and pos­sums are caus­ing irrepara­ble dam­age to the country’s unique bird life. If noth­ing is done, the iconic Kiwi could be extinct within 50 years. The gov­ern­ment and vol­un­teer groups across the coun­try have responded with a plan to erad­i­cate preda­tory mam­mals from New Zealand by 2050. But is all the time, energy and money needed to do this really jus­ti­fied? And is it morally right to kill off an ani­mal species that humans intro­duced in the first place?

Pre­sen­ter: Marnie Chester­ton
Pro­ducer: Anna Lacey

(Source: BBC World Ser­vice Crowd Sci­ence)

Directions

direc­tions to Auck­land Zoo

Auck­land Zoo is located just west of down­town Auck­land and next to the beau­ti­ful West­ern Springs Reserve and close to the Museum of Trans­port and Tech­nol­ogy (MOTAT). MOTAT’s tram net­work pro­vides a link between both attractions.

Address:
Motions Road
West­ern Springs
Auck­land 1022
New Zealand

pub­lic transport

by bus

For bus and other pub­lic trans­port options to get to Auck­land Zoo visit the Auck­land Trans­port jour­ney plan­ner. If tak­ing the bus, the clos­est stop is 8124 on Great North Road, oppo­site Motions Road (with a short walk down Motions Road to Auck­land Zoo entrance).

by bicy­cle

As Auck­land is not par­tic­u­larly hilly and the sur­round­ings of the Zoo, west of the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict, can be regarded as rather flat, you’re look­ing at an easy bicy­cle ride of less than 5 km com­ing from the city cen­tre. And you should have no prob­lem find­ing a rental bike. Find­ing a decent bicy­cle rack near the entrance of the premises is another thing though.

by car

Auck­land Zoo is well sign­posted both east and west­bound on the North West­ern motor­way, use sat­nav or the jour­ney plan­ner (below) to get direc­tions to Auck­land Zoo.

Auck­land Zoo has two large car parks pro­vid­ing free off-​street park­ing for cars, char­ter buses and tour coaches.

Get direc­tions

Show the options

Avoid high­ways
Avoid toll roads
Km Miles

From : --  Choose source      --Auckland Zoo or

To : --  Choose destination   --Auckland Zoo or

23.02.2017

It has been over eight years since my first visit to Delhi Zoo or the National Zoo­log­i­cal Park as it is offi­cially called. This time the weather is a bit more friendly — less hot and damp — to my non-​acclimatised fit­ness and there’s even less smog in town. In other words per­fect con­di­tions for a short visit and see if things have changed, and if the mas­ter plan has fur­ther materialised.

First thing I notice when I arrive at the gate — after I con­vinced the tuk­tuk dri­ver that I just needed to be brought to the Zoo that was most cer­tainly not closed today — is the ren­o­vated if not revamped entrance. And with the entrance the pro­ce­dures are changed as well. Although I can­not remem­ber all from eight years ago, this time the for­eigner ticket has to be pur­chased at the booth left from the entrance gate. Next my ruck­sack and I undergo a phys­i­cal check in the ‘gents’ lane, but not before I pay an addi­tional fee for bring­ing a camera.

Before I reach the first enclo­sure I notice that they have made the warn­ing mes­sage about the legal pro­hi­bi­tion of teas­ing and feed­ing zoo ani­mals stand out even more than last time (see Sig­nage, Infor­ma­tion and Edu­ca­tion). So, after being searched and warned for what is not allowed into the park I decide to obey by the rules, because a few months in an Indian prison is not what I see as an appro­pri­ate exten­sion of my stay in India.

The first enclo­sure I encounter is a mixed-​species exhibit com­pris­ing spot­ted deer, bark­ing deer or munt­jac, sam­bar deer, nil­gai and black­buck. Unfor­tu­nately this is only one of a few mixed-​species exhibits to be found on the Zoo grounds, so they haven’t lived up to their mas­ter plan yet. This enclo­sure with ‘Her­bi­vores of Cen­tral India’ is of con­sid­er­able size and pro­vides shade and veg­e­ta­tion. It is a good exam­ple of what is about to come, many indige­nous species — espe­cially deer herds — in large dry moated pad­docks. The group­ing of the ani­mal col­lec­tion is a bit unclear, but it seems to be based on tax­o­nomic argu­ments, such as pri­mates, deer, car­ni­vores, birds and rep­tiles, with the deer species out­num­ber­ing all the other species.

It is obvi­ous that the biggest prob­lem of the Zoo is water-​related, scarcity of clean water and lack of proper drainage. Nev­er­the­less an over­head water-​tank should be oper­a­tional by now as the zoo sched­uled to have its own reser­voir under the mas­ter plan.

The large water bird pond is still as impres­sive as it was eight years ago and doesn’t show to suf­fer from water short­age. Its green water is not a sign of bad qual­ity but due to algae and duck­weed growth, which both are ben­e­fi­cial for the water birds. The birds that pop­u­late the large pond are not pin­ioned and choose to be there on their own free will, but basi­cally because of the food that is pro­vided of course. Some of the bird species are migra­tory birds.

Turn­ing left and with the remains of the old fort Purana Qila on my left, I enter the pri­mate sec­tion. The lion-​tailed macaque island is sur­rounded by a water-​filled moat and com­prises sev­eral enrich­ment fea­tures. The same can be said of the chim­panzee enclo­sure that is beau­ti­fully sit­u­ated uphill and appar­ently con­tains some remains of a for­mer wall, but this could be fake. Across from the chim­panzees a large moated grassy exhibit with a few large trees houses a few fat rhe­sus macaques and grey lan­gurs, while another pri­mate enclo­sure is under devel­op­ment in the far­thest left cor­ner of the Zoo grounds. Although I didn’t see any chim­panzees, I am afraid that — like in 2008 — there isn’t a large group of chimps in the Zoo’s col­lec­tion, because only a low num­ber of lion-​tailed macaques and rhe­sus macaques are kept as well. This is an old-​fashioned lack of behav­ioural enrich­ment and not good to ful­fil the social needs of the great apes and the macaques, which all live in large socially hier­ar­chic troops.

From this point onwards sev­eral large enclo­sures fol­low for dif­fer­ent deer species, none of them held together in a mixed-​species exhibit. Nev­er­the­less, these are large mod­ern facil­i­ties with large herds of deer species that pro­vide space as well as shade, either through veg­e­ta­tion or arti­fi­cial con­struc­tions. The sam­bar deer and black­buck that inhabit the mixed-​species exhibit near the entrance both have an impres­sively large enclo­sure at their dis­posal in this sec­tion as well. Espe­cially the black­buck enclo­sure is beautiful.

It’s obvi­ous that improve­ments have been achieved in this part of the zoo, because var­i­ous old aban­doned relics from the past are there to be seen, sit­u­ated close to the mod­ern deer enclo­sures. At least they seem aban­doned and not in use any more, which I hope they really are.

While enjoy­ing the spa­cious lay­out of the park I hear in the dis­tance the typ­i­cal call of a gib­bon species. I am look­ing for­ward to see if improve­ments have been made to the design and the enrich­ment fea­tures of their enclo­sure since my pre­vi­ous visit. Some­thing that is really nec­es­sary when I see the small preda­tor exhibits that I am about to approach. Two blocks of mod­ern cages appear when I fol­low the main foot­path along the black­buck domain. Cages that con­tain and dis­play a jun­gle cat (Felis chaus), com­mon palm civet (Para­dox­u­rus her­maph­ro­di­tus), small Indian civet (Viver­ric­ula indica), Ben­gal fox (Vulpes ben­galen­sis) and jackal (Canis aureus). All of which clas­si­fied as Least Con­cern accord­ing the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species, so they have no actual con­ser­va­tion value and are there just to be shown to the pub­lic. All the more rea­son to pro­vide them with an enclo­sure that meet mod­ern stan­dards that allow nat­ural behav­iour, which is absolutely not the case in these ridicu­lously small enclo­sures here at Delhi Zoo, even though the cats have access to high level platforms.

Almost all exhibits here at the National Zoo­log­i­cal Park, apart from the aviaries and some awful exam­ples as the ones for the small preda­tors, are moated enclo­sures accord­ing the orig­i­nal Hagen­beck style. Most of the moats are dry and acces­si­ble to the ani­mals, and there­fore not an addi­tional bur­den to the lim­ited water sup­ply. The Indian rhino enclo­sure is a good exam­ple of such design, although the rhi­nos are denied access to the moat by a fence that looks rather frag­ile con­sid­er­ing the mass of these pachy­derms. But there is no rea­son for the rhi­nos to go walk­a­bout in the moat, because they have access to a huge area with trees that pro­vide shade and ponds to cool­ing off.

The next door bird sec­tion is much less impres­sive. The row of old-​fashioned aviaries sit­u­ated in a semi-​circle around a shady area that is invit­ing for hav­ing a pic­nic — which is impos­si­ble as you are not allowed to bring ‘eat­a­bles’ on the premises — com­prises a large col­lec­tion of var­i­ous bird species. Unfor­tu­nately, each aviary is small in size with just a few spec­i­mens on dis­play, which seems to be the golden rule here at Delhi Zoo except for the deer species that are kept in large herds.

The sin­gle male African ele­phant that is housed in the south-​east cor­ner of the grounds has ample space to roam around in an area that is not per­fectly land­scaped. In fact this ‘neglected’ area looks like a wild savan­nah, nice! I can imag­ine that the ele­phant misses social con­tact of con­specifics and that he there­fore tries to make con­tact with pass­ing vis­i­tors. But unfor­tu­nately for him the foot­path clos­est to the enclo­sure is blocked.

The hip­popota­mus, another pachy­derm species not indige­nous to Asia, is rep­re­sented by six spec­i­mens. These hip­pos occupy two sim­i­larly designed enclo­sures, both with a large pool. The fourth pachy­derm species of Delhi Zoo is kept in yet another dif­fer­ently styled exhibit. The view­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties at the Asian ele­phants exhibit are bet­ter than at the African ele­phant exhibit, but that also means that the vis­i­tor has a good oppor­tu­nity to assess what it’s lack­ing — enrich­ment fea­tures such as a pool. I see only one ele­phant, although there are sup­posed to be two of them — still not a herd of course. From the Asian ele­phant exhibit I walk back to the two hoolock gib­bons (Hoolock hoolock), who have stopped ‘singing’ about an hour ago, and check out their enclo­sure. Unfor­tu­nately, although of a mod­ern design with a deep dry moat, it is small and lacks suf­fi­cient enrich­ment. It is a pity to see there are no proper facil­i­ties to allow the gib­bons to express their nat­ural swing­ing behav­iour through a for­est canopy, or some­thing arti­fi­cial that resem­bles tree­tops more than the cur­rent design.

Sev­eral species can be found in more than one enclo­sure, such as the afore­men­tioned sam­bar deer and black­buck. Like­wise, the Asian lions are dis­trib­uted over two moated enclo­sures, of which the one close to the giraffe pad­dock is the best in my opin­ion. That one has a dry moat, sev­eral ele­va­tions, good shel­ters and obser­va­tion plat­forms, while the other one has a water-​filled moat and flat grounds. The giraffe enclo­sure that is sit­u­ated back to back to one of the lion enclo­sures shows no sign of life. It is a beau­ti­ful dry pad­dock with large trees resem­bling a savan­nah area, but appar­ently it is empty — at least the infor­ma­tion panel is empty as well. It is not the only enclo­sure that is actu­ally empty while no noti­fi­ca­tion or expla­na­tion is given. In this case it is prob­a­bly due to ques­tion­able man­age­ment because the Zoo’s giraffes died as part of a series of deaths in 2015 and 2016 of sev­eral dif­fer­ent ani­mals includ­ing hog deer, lion-​tailed macaque, lan­gur and cape buf­falo. The last giraffe died in 2016.

More or less across from the giraffe enclo­sure there are two sim­i­lar bear enclo­sure located next to each other. The enclo­sures for sloth bear and Asian black bear both have a typ­i­cal amphithe­atre design with a deep dry moat on the vis­i­tors’ side.

The Ben­gal tigers (Pan­thera tigris tigris) are dis­trib­uted over three dif­fer­ent enclo­sures. The Zoo is more or less famous for its white Ben­gal tigers, which is very unfor­tu­nate, because there is no such thing as a wild white tiger, in fact they are a genetic aber­ra­tion and suf­fer from many genetic prob­lems due to inbreed­ing in zoos (see also Hav­ing white tigers on dis­play in zoos — an appalling logic?). All enclo­sures have a mod­ern design and will stand com­par­i­son with most tiger enclo­sures of renowned zoos, although too small in size, of course, like everywhere.

Delhi Zoo man­age­ment made a wise deci­sion to have only a lim­ited num­ber of species on dis­play. Whether or not it is finan­cially dri­ven, it allows for large enclo­sures to be devel­oped and the pos­si­bil­ity to cre­ate large social groups of species that do so them­selves in the wild. But apart from the ungu­lates there are only a few spec­i­mens of most other species in the Zoo’s ani­mal col­lec­tion. This is a shame for espe­cially the pri­mates that live in social troops, such as the chim­panzee. Remem­ber, there’s only one chimp accord­ing the Zoo’s own inven­tory on the website.

What’s strik­ing is the total lack of spe­cific chil­dren enter­tain­ment, nei­ther play­grounds nor education.

Con­sid­er­ing food and drinks I thought it would be safer to bring my own water, although there are sev­eral ‘water points’ scat­tered around the premises where drink­ing water is avail­able. You are not allowed to bring your own food, but there are a few small and sim­ple food stalls inside that sell ice cream and candy. Near the car park and the square in front of the entrance there’s a large food court for those already accus­tomed to street vendor’s food in India or those with a sturdy digestion.

23.02.2017

Offi­cial Intro­duc­tion Video

Sig­nage, Infor­ma­tion and Education

To guide peo­ple around the large Zoo grounds there are two types of sign­posts in use (old and new) together with large maps on strate­gi­cal loca­tions. This is rather help­ful, because besides the main route there are many cross­roads and side paths.

It appears that it should be made very clear to the vis­i­tors that it is legally for­bid­den to tease and feed ani­mals in the zoo and that any vio­la­tion of that law is pun­ish­able with impris­on­ment for a term up to six months. And peo­ple are rather often reminded about this pro­hi­bi­tion with pan­els along the foot­path, pan­els that are some­times very graphical.

The infor­ma­tion pan­els at the enclo­sures pro­vide quite some detailed knowl­edge about the species kept there, but it is all text and no graph­ics what­so­ever. Per­son­ally I don’t mind, but it is not with­out rea­son that you see graph­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of the species’ habi­tat and geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion, and some­times even on their nour­ish­ment, in many zoos today. This quickly updates the vis­i­tor on these basic top­ics and allow more time for fur­ther read­ing on other inter­est­ing facts about the species. The same can be said for the species’ con­ser­va­tion sta­tus. Most self-​respecting zoo­log­i­cal gar­dens use the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species clas­si­fi­ca­tion to show the cur­rent con­ser­va­tion sta­tus of the species on dis­play. And prefer­ably by using the graph­ics of the Red List itself. This is not the case here at Delhi Zoo, how­ever, infor­ma­tion about the con­ser­va­tion sta­tus is some­times given, although it some­times requires inter­pre­ta­tion of the text.

Despite these small flaws plenty of infor­ma­tion is pro­vided that can make the vis­i­tor leave the zoo more knowl­edge­able about the ani­mals they have seen than before they entered. If they take the time to read it of course. But espe­cially the ‘fun’ facts, such as ‘the rhe­sus macaque was the first pri­mate to be sent in space with a space ship’, will do the trick I hope.

Apart from the species’ infor­ma­tion pan­els near the enclo­sures there are hardly any other instru­ments they use to have a tour around the zoo grounds be of more edu­ca­tional value for either the gen­eral pub­lic or for chil­dren specif­i­cally. Nev­er­the­less the Zoo is try­ing to raise aware­ness on the value of nature con­ser­va­tion among the gen­eral pub­lic and there­fore organ­ises var­i­ous spe­cial pro­grammes about nature and the Zoo’s endeav­ours in this field in the Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre near the chim­panzee enclosure.

Fur­ther­more the National Zoo­log­i­cal Park as Delhi Zoo offi­cially is called has a library for nature lovers, researchers and stu­dents. They have around 2100 books, mag­a­zine and jour­nal sub­scrip­tions avail­able mostly related to the field of wildlife man­age­ment, vet­eri­nary sci­ence and horticulture.

In addi­tion to their edu­ca­tional efforts Delhi Zoo par­tic­i­pates ‘hands-​on’ in the con­ser­va­tion breed­ing pro­grammes of endan­gered Indian species — an ini­tia­tive of the Cen­tral Zoo Authority.

Directions

Direc­tions to New Delhi National Zoo

Address:
Mathura Road
PIN — 110003
New Delhi
India

pub­lic transport

The best choice to go to the Zoo is pub­lic trans­port I guess. If you arrive in New Delhi at either one of the rail­way or bus sta­tions you are still at least 5 km away from the Zoo. If you don’t mind walk­ing you are okay then, but oth­er­wise you should decide which mode of trans­porta­tion to take next. The near­est metro sta­tions to the Zoo are Pra­gati Maidan Metro Sta­tion and CGO Com­plex, Lodi Road, both approx­i­mately 2 km from the Zoo still.

There are sev­eral buses that pass the Zoo. Delhi Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion Bus routes towards the Zoo are as follows:

For more infor­ma­tion on prices and time tables you check the DTC web­site.

If you want to go the easy way you can order a taxi at your hotel or you could take a motorised rick­shaw, but you should be pre­pared to (a) nego­ti­ate the price and (b) give addi­tional geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions where you want to go, because some­times they don’t know where the zoo is (or pre­tend not to know), in which case you end up trav­el­ling a longer dis­tance than is really nec­es­sary, includ­ing a higher price.

by bicy­cle

Cycling, is far from being a lifestyle choice for peo­ple liv­ing in New Delhi. Cyclists are at the bot­tom of the city’s road sys­tem, and cycles con­tinue to be a mode of trans­port for the poor. Accord­ing to a recent Cen­tre for Sci­ence and Envi­ron­ment (CSE) report, Delhi tops in road acci­dents deaths in the coun­try and is most unsafe for cyclists. On an aver­age two cyclists die every week on Delhi roads, and for traf­fic police, cyclists and pedes­tri­ans just do not exist (Source: Hin­dus­tan Times, 18.10.2014).

So, going to the Zoo on your own on a bicy­cle is not rec­om­mended. Besides it will be dif­fi­cult to find a bicy­cle rental shop. Although there’s a com­pany that organ­ise guided tours on bicy­cle through the city of Delhi — a com­pany started by a Dutch­man of course!.

by car

I wouldn’t rec­om­mend to go by car to the Zoo either. Firstly, they drive like they all want to be first at the same spot which lead to many near-​collisions. But sec­ondly, as a result of this kind of dri­ving, the traf­fic con­ges­tion is enor­mous, and rush hour means there’s a total stand­still on the roads. Except for bicy­cles and some­times rick­shaws (human pow­ered or motorised) which can manœu­vre through this great mess of honk­ing cars. And you can walk of course!

Get direc­tions

Show the options

Avoid high­ways
Avoid toll roads
Km Miles

From : --  Choose source      --Delhi Zoo or

To : --  Choose destination   --Delhi Zoo or

05.03.2016

On a beau­ti­ful Sat­ur­day dur­ing an excel­lent late sum­mer period I visit the Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre, which above all is a breed­ing cen­tre for native New Zealand species. Though offi­cially not a zoo it cap­tures sev­eral of the essen­tial fea­tures you’ll see at respected rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the mod­ern zoo com­mu­nity. They keep rare species in cap­tiv­ity, they breed endan­gered species, they engage in ‘in-​situ’ con­ser­va­tion by return­ing captive-​bred species into New Zealand’s wild and they run edu­ca­tional pro­grammes. They even have daily enter­tain­ment feed­ing of kaka, the inquis­i­tive bush par­rots, and the long finned eel or tuna, New Zealand’s biggest endemic fish.

Not all species are on dis­play, some of them are only kept for breed­ing pur­poses. But you can see con­ser­va­tion in action when expe­ri­enc­ing close encoun­ters with some of New Zealand’s most pre­cious and threat­ened native birds, includ­ing stitch­bird, kaka and kokako that has been rein­tro­duced in the Mount Bruce For­est — the last remain­ing rem­nant of this once majes­tic forest.

At the Wildlife Cen­tre they keep the fol­low­ing species in aviaries and enclo­sures: kiwi, kokako, kaka (bush par­rot), whio (blue duck), kakariki (yel­low and red-​crowned and orange-​fronted para­keet), hihi (stitch­bird), takahe (notor­nis) and Tuatara — the liv­ing fos­sil. The lat­ter is the only sur­vivor of an extinct group of rep­tiles that lived dur­ing the age of the dinosaurs. Tuatara sur­vived because no preda­tors invaded New Zealand when it sep­a­rated from Aus­tralia about 90 mil­lion years ago. They lived through­out the main­land of New Zealand until humans arrived and intro­duced harm­ful predators.

After pass­ing through the visitor’s cen­tre you first enter the part with the few enclo­sures where they keep and breed the endan­gered species in cap­tiv­ity. Most of the enclo­sures are well-​hidden in the lush veg­e­ta­tion of the for­est. The aviaries are not spec­tac­u­lar, but fit-​for-​purpose and they pro­vide ample space for the birds to fly around. The kiwi house & nurs­ery is a noc­tur­nal house of course, where they have two North Island brown kiwi (Apterix man­telli) on dis­play. One of them is the extra­or­di­nary white female kiwi named Manukura. She is not an albino, but her white colour is caused by the rare reces­sive gene both her par­ents carry and that results in reduced pig­men­ta­tion of the feath­ers mak­ing them white — this is known as leu­cism. This rare trait would have made her an easy tar­get for preda­tors in the wild, stand­ing out in her white plumage at night. She prob­a­bly would not have lived very long in the wild, and cer­tainly not the age of four she has reached here at the Wildlife Centre.

Besides the mod­est area where they have enclo­sures and breed­ing facil­i­ties there is an enor­mous native for­est with sev­eral tracks (some even acces­si­ble for wheel­chairs), of which one is a 2 hour loop walk. Here they rein­tro­duced hihi, kaka and kokako, but other native birds can be seen and heard as well, such as piwakawaka (fan­tail), riroriro (grey war­bler), kereru (native wood pigeon), kotare (king­fisher), pukeko (swamp hen), titi­pounamu (rifle­man), kori­mako (bell­bird), pipi­wha­rau­roa (shin­ing cuckoo), tui (par­son bird) and weka (woodhen).

The down­side of this large nat­ural for­est is that it is hard to keep preda­tors out. Preda­tors such as stoats, wild­cat and pos­sum that love an easy meal. There­fore there is an exten­sive anti-​predator pro­gramme with many vol­un­teers set­ting traps, plac­ing of bait and check­ing for preda­tors. The preda­tors that are trapped will be killed.

When you don’t like to do much walk­ing, which I did because I felt a lit­tle under the weather, you can always go to the café. It has a good choice of food and bev­er­ages, but more impor­tantly it has a ter­race with out­door seat­ing which over­looks the large enclo­sure with two takahe. Arti­fi­cially breed­ing the takahe was more or less the rea­son why the Wildlife Cen­tre was estab­lished in this area in the 1960s, but they have stopped breed­ing these endan­gered birds. Still they have two takahe liv­ing at the Cen­tre, mostly for edu­ca­tional purposes.

The view­ing deck of the café is a place to enjoy your lunch, relax and watch the takahe if they’re out there. But when the free roam­ing kaka (bush par­rots) are fully awake you have to be very alert, because the kaka love to steal some food of your plate. These cheeky birds ‘ter­rorise’ the ter­race (see video), there­fore every table is pro­vided with a ‘kaka repel­lent spray gun’, which is just plain water in a hand sprayer. But it works to keep the birds at a lit­tle dis­tance. All this makes it easy to spend a few enjoy­able hours on the terrace.

Captive-​breeding results
The track record of captive-​breeding at the National Wildlife Cen­tre (NWC) is con­vinc­ingly good when you know that they could ter­mi­nate sev­eral breed­ing pro­grammes. These pro­grammes were con­sid­ered com­pleted due to the self-​sustaining pop­u­la­tions that were achieved after rein­tro­duc­tion of captive-​bred indi­vid­u­als. Sev­eral major cap­tive breed­ing pro­grammes have recently been com­pleted at NWC, includ­ing ter­mi­na­tion of the Camp­bell Island teal and North Island kokako breed­ing pro­grammes fol­low­ing advice from their respec­tive recov­ery groups. Captive-​reared shore plover, mainly from NWC, were also suc­cess­fully used to estab­lish a self-​sustaining pop­u­la­tion on an island off the east coast of the North Island fol­low­ing releases dur­ing 1998 – 2004. The shore plover captive-​breeding for release pro­gramme has now shifted focus to Mana Island, with the first birds released in 2007. (Pukaha Mount Bruce cap­tive man­age­ment Pro­grammes, Miskelly — 2008)

In 1996, nine juve­nile kākā were released into the Pukaha Mount Bruce for­est, in east­ern Wairarapa, from where this North Island sub-​species had been absent for nearly 50 years. They were a com­bi­na­tion of hand-​reared birds from the Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre and wild ones from Kapiti Island, near Welling­ton. This was the first time captive-​bred kākā had been released into the wild and the first relo­ca­tion of wild kākā. The kākā project is part of pio­neer­ing species man­age­ment work at the centre.

When you’re inter­ested in how a North Island kākā sounds like:

(Source: Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion website)

Con­clu­sion
For a for­eigner (or pakahe as they say in New Zealand) vis­it­ing from Europe the Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre has many exotic species on dis­play, but that is obvi­ously not their main objec­tive. Their con­ser­va­tion efforts on native New Zealand species only is to be applauded I think, because the pop­u­la­tion of these indige­nous species com­prise the total num­ber of these species world­wide. There is no res­cue pop­u­la­tion avail­able out­side New Zealand. They have suc­cess­fully bred sev­eral species in cap­tiv­ity and rein­tro­duced them in the wild.

Edu­ca­tion is an impor­tant part of their mis­sion. They have suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing a good mix of edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als address­ing chil­dren and adults alike at the visitor’s cen­tre, while invit­ing all to explore the native for­est and seek out the many birds.

Takahē

Takahē con­ser­va­tion

The takahē (Por­phyrio hochstet­teri) or notor­nis is a large, non-​passerine, flight­less rail (a land-​based rel­a­tive of our famil­iar coot and moorhen) from New Zealand. Many species sim­i­lar to this went extinct in the trop­i­cal Pacific in the years fol­low­ing first coloni­sa­tion of their island homes by humans, due to over-​hunting and defor­esta­tion. The takahē sur­vived because New Zealand is a large, moun­tain­ous and wet island, which as a result suf­fered less defor­esta­tion, and had more places for birds to hide from hunters¹. Even so, for 50 years it was thought to be extinct until a small pop­u­la­tion was dis­cov­ered still alive in 1948 in the remote Murchi­son Mountains.

It was Geof­frey Orbell, a med­ical doc­tor and keen tram­per, who redis­cov­ered — together with his three com­pan­ions — the takahē in Fiordland’s Murchi­son Moun­tains on New Zealand’s South Island. At the time it was esti­mated there could be about 500 birds in that moun­tain range, but in 1952 when they revis­ited the area they thought the pop­u­la­tion size had fallen to about 300 birds. What­ever caused the decrease, for instance com­pe­ti­tion for food with red deer, it deemed nec­es­sary to start a cap­tive breed­ing pro­gramme to save the takahē from the brink of extinction.

When the gov­ern­ment in 1957 decided to begin a cap­tive breed­ing pro­gramme with the recently redis­cov­ered takahē, the Wildlife Ser­vice con­tacted Elwyn Welch. Welch was one of New Zealand’s lead­ing ama­teur ornithol­o­gists and had prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in rais­ing endan­gered bird species. An exten­sive plan was devel­oped to bring young chicks out of the Fiordland’s Murchi­son Moun­tains on New Zealand’s South Island where the takahē were redis­cov­ered. Welch trained ban­tam hens to raise pūkeko chicks. The ban­tams were also trained to sit on eggs no mat­ter what hap­pened. The hens were placed in spe­cial nest boxes with dummy eggs and trans­ported around the farm’s premises on the back of a truck, on a trac­tor or in a ruck­sack — for the hens to get used to the long and rough trip ahead. In 1958 the ban­tams were taken to Fiord­land. First they col­lected takahē eggs in the Murchi­son Moun­tains, but this wasn’t very suc­cess­ful. So, they decided to seek out chicks instead. They cap­tured four chicks, which the ban­tams read­ily moth­ered. These hens returned as foster-​mothers to ‘Kelvin Grove’, Welch’s farm on the North Island with four takahē chicks under their wings. The entire oper­a­tion was under­taken in absolute secrecy and even got a code-​name, Oper­a­tion Pass­word. Welch and his two assis­tants, Gor­don Williams from the Wildlife Ser­vice and Peter Mor­ri­son from the National Film Unit, trav­elled under assumed names, and even when the chicks were safely back at Mount Bruce their exact loca­tion was kept secret.

The project was an absolute suc­cess, with over 13,000 peo­ple vis­it­ing Kelvin Grove when the arti­fi­cially bred takahē were first dis­played to the pub­lic in 1960. In fact, the num­ber of vis­i­tors were so large that the dis­play was closed after only a fortnight.

When takahē were cho­sen for the cap­tive breed­ing pro­gramme very lit­tle was known about the bird’s diet, breed­ing biol­ogy or nest­ing habits. Achiev­ing suc­cess required sta­mina and many years before pio­neer­ing results could be recorded. The lessons learnt told that it was best to try and estab­lish small pop­u­la­tions on preda­tor free off-​shore islands.

The main cap­tive breed­ing of takahē is now located at Bur­wood Bush near Te Anau, close to the Murchi­son Moun­tains. This small moun­tain range, the last refuge of takahē in the wild, still is the only recov­ery site in the Takahē Recov­ery Pro­gramme. A recov­ery site is a large area con­tain­ing the neces­si­ties for a nat­ural life — typ­i­cal takahē habi­tat, con­trol of intro­duced preda­tors allow­ing the bird pop­u­la­tion to become self-​sustaining.

Cur­rently, the takahē pair at Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre are held for edu­ca­tional rather than breed­ing pur­poses. But they did save the rare genes of the takahē here at Mount Bruce!

¹ Dun­can et al., 2013. Mag­ni­tude and vari­a­tions of pre­his­toric bird extinc­tions in the Pacific. PNAS (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1216511110)

(Source: Wikipedia; Elwyn Owen Arnold Welch from Teara — the ency­clo­pe­dia of New Zealand; Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre by Colin Scad­den, 2000; Takahē recov­ery web­site; The Guardian news, 21.05.2016)

Directions

direc­tions to Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre, Pukaha Mount Bruce

The Mount Bruce National Wildlife Cen­tre is located on State High­way 2 between Mas­ter­ton in the Wairarapa (approx­i­mately 30 km) and Eke­tahuna in the Tararua dis­trict (approx­i­mately 10 km). This is toward the east coast, on New Zealand’s North Island.

Address:
85379 State High­way 2
5881
Mount Bruce
New Zealand

pub­lic transport

Train

If you are com­ing from Welling­ton, you can take the train to Mas­ter­ton and then either take a taxi to Pukaha Mount Bruce or use a rental car.

Train timetable is as follows:

Mon­day to Fri­day
Depart Welling­ton 8.25am Arrive Mas­ter­ton 10.00am
Depart Mas­ter­ton 3.40pm Arrive Welling­ton 5.17pm

Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and Pub­lic Hol­i­days
Depart Welling­ton 9.55am Arrive Mas­ter­ton 11.30am
Depart Mas­ter­ton 4.50pm Arrive Welling­ton 6.25pm

For more details on train timeta­bles and fares, visit www​.metlink​.org​.nz

Bus

Tranzit Coach­lines oper­ates a bus ser­vice from Mas­ter­ton to Palmer­ston North and can set down or pick reserved pas­sen­gers at Pukaha Mount Bruce

Tues­day to Friday

• Departs Mas­ter­ton 9.05am arrives Pukaha Mount Bruce 9.20am (con­tin­u­ing to Palmer­ston North arriv­ing 11.00am)

• Departs Pukaha Mount Bruce 4.25pm arriv­ing Mas­ter­ton 4.55pm

• Reser­va­tions are essen­tial please phone 06 3706600 or email This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

by bicy­cle

For those cyclists that are addicted to using their bicy­cle I would say ‘go for it’. It really depends on where you start of course, but you are in for a few kilo­me­tres on the road. A road that is being used by heavy traf­fic as well. It will be a rather flat ride along this part of State High­way 2 with great views on the hilly countryside.

by car

It takes about 2 hours to drive from Welling­ton and about the same from Napier. It takes approx­i­mately 1 hour to drive from Palmer­ston North. Espe­cially the route from Palmer­ston North through the Man­awatu gorge is very scenic.

There’s free park­ing available.

Get direc­tions

Show the options

Avoid high­ways
Avoid toll roads
Km Miles

From : --  Choose source      --Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre or

To : --  Choose destination   --Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre or