Berlin Tierpark Tierpark Berlin news 2023

Ok, sorry for the delay.

3) "Elephant" mosaic:
The developing mosaic is open to see. So, as with the elephant complex, you can follow the progress. This video has been taken some weeks ago, so it looks much better by now. It will still take some more weeks or even months, though.

4) Asia enclosure:
The latest progress has been really stunning and a lot of material has been implemented. It also seems that the complex will be much bigger than I had first suspected. This way, the central "rock formation" (inside boxes) also seems much less dominant than I had initially feared. Around the exhibit, there now are a lot of bamboo frames for didactic boards and the like. For a whole while, I was puzzled what they are actually doing with this area. By now, I start to get the idea and it could turn out to be quite attractive.

5) Golden cats:
As mentioned, I only saw the male cat. But I was able to observe him for a longer time. A really appealing animal with incredibly beautiful fur but also great markings on the face. My children also really liked it and only left after the cat had disappered behind some vegetation.

6) Other impressions:
It was quite crowded again, but people spread out quite well throughout the park. It seems, the park is becoming more and more attractive for families in general as well as some tourists (you hear more different languages now). Children get more activated by small playground equipment but also through the landscape (climbing rocks, sandy areas, etc.) as well as through appealing didactics. This success also could help to secure funding for future projects (lions and rhinos as well as some more African ungulates seem to be safe, but I'm not sure about the bigger projects).
 
lintworm said:
At the same time the non-mammal collection has gone downhill at a breathtaking pace in the Tierpark, just because the current director isn't really interested, so depends on the view you take.
Click to expand...

I think this process of reduction is about to come to a stop and even slightly turn around, though. Unfortunately, the latest annual report still isn't out. Otherwise, we could have a look at the latest development to check this hypothesis out.
When I last went through earlier editions, however, I noticed they gave some feasible reasons for reductions (old or single specimen died or went to other collections/breeders) as well as some questionable ones (apparently, predators became much more deadly and effective in recent years).

Also, I'm not so sure if the director really doesn't care about birds, reptiles etc at all. I think, perhaps he didn't like the old concept of presenting them. Some of the birds in fact got far better conditions or at least became presented more attractively (e.g. Vultures, Ostriches and Darwin's Rheas, Pelikans, Marabou Storks, Black Crowned Cranes, African Penguins, Herons, the birds in the tropical hall, the birds in Himalaya...). Sometimes, this came at the expense of other birds, but sometimes they even got new species in. And in some cases, this bound quite some money as well. And of course, they even started the daily flight show with Eagles, Vultures, Falcons, Secretarybirds and Owls . Probably, the average visitor won't even feel like the bird collection got any less attractive or there actually are less birds. And I would think this is the biggest difference in general. The old director mostly cared about having and breeding precious/fascinating animals. The new director mostly cares about how to keep/present/convey animals (and they now do a much better job at explaining how special and/or endangered some of their animals are).

When it comes to reptiles and amphibians, of course the loss of the crocodile building and the snake farm could never be fully compensated. This is for sure. But as with the birds, these animals also got spread out throughout the park. In fact, each of the major buildings now features either birds or reptiles/amphibians or even both. And there are small animals/invertebrates like insects or spiders as well. For instance, the Brehm Building has never presented a richer biodiversity than now. The monkey building also presents tortoises and small terrariums. The new elephant building will present birds and reptiles as well. The same would go for the Amazon river building or even the huge bird aviary, if these projects ever get realised.

So, I would say it's mostly the combination of modernising the infrastructure, improving the enclosures and creating new attractions which seems to make birds, reptiles and so on less of a priority. But they are part of most developments (new or renewed buildings and geographical habitats/zones). So let's hope we went through the worst phase and it will mostly get better now.
 
markmeier said:
I think this process of reduction is about to come to a stop and even slightly turn around, though. Unfortunately, the latest annual report still isn't out. Otherwise, we could have a look at the latest development to check this hypothesis out.
When I last went through earlier editions, however, I noticed they gave some feasible reasons for reductions (old or single specimen died or went to other collections/breeders) as well as some questionable ones (apparently, predators became much more deadly and effective in recent years).

Also, I'm not so sure if the director really doesn't care about birds, reptiles etc at all. I think, perhaps he didn't like the old concept of presenting them. Some of the birds in fact got far better conditions or at least became presented more attractively (e.g. Vultures, Ostriches and Darwin's Rheas, Pelikans, Marabou Storks, Black Crowned Cranes, African Penguins, Herons, the birds in the tropical hall, the birds in Himalaya...). Sometimes, this came at the expense of other birds, but sometimes they even got new species in. And in some cases, this bound quite some money as well. And of course, they even started the daily flight show with Eagles, Vultures, Falcons, Secretarybirds and Owls . Probably, the average visitor won't even feel like the bird collection got any less attractive or there actually are less birds. And I would think this is the biggest difference in general. The old director mostly cared about having and breeding precious/fascinating animals. The new director mostly cares about how to keep/present/convey animals (and they now do a much better job at explaining how special and/or endangered some of their animals are).

When it comes to reptiles and amphibians, of course the loss of the crocodile building and the snake farm could never be fully compensated. This is for sure. But as with the birds, these animals also got spread out throughout the park. In fact, each of the major buildings now features either birds or reptiles/amphibians or even both. And there are small animals/invertebrates like insects or spiders as well. For instance, the Brehm Building has never presented a richer biodiversity than now. The monkey building also presents tortoises and small terrariums. The new elephant building will present birds and reptiles as well. The same would go for the Amazon river building or even the huge bird aviary, if these projects ever get realised.

So, I would say it's mostly the combination of modernising the infrastructure, improving the enclosures and creating new attractions which seems to make birds, reptiles and so on less of a priority. But they are part of most developments (new or renewed buildings and geographical habitats/zones). So let's hope we went through the worst phase and it will mostly get better now.
Click to expand...

I hope you are right with the turnaround, but I am not so sure... The closure of the snake farm and crocodile hall was not strange and they have managed to move reptiles and amphibians to other parts of the zoo quite well. But especially when it comes to birds, the decline has been huge and mostly self-inflicted..

It is true that foxes and martens are a bigger problem nowadays, but apparently Knieriem refused funding from the Tierparkfreunde to net over some ponds. TP Berlin used to have a gigantic waterfowl collection, but that is largely gone....

The same can be seen in the pheasantry area which used to have a fantastic collection of gamefowl, laughingthrush and Asian cold adapted passerines. That area is going nowhere anywhere soon, but a lot of the nice species have just been allowed to die out.... Zoo collections are always in flux, but if you are without a bird curator for some time, there won't be much positive news. Since the end of 2015 towards end of 2021 the Tierpark had a net loss of over 100 bird species and the decline had started already before 2015... The African development and Himalaya both have a very lopsided mammal to bird ratio, while there is plenty of space to do more... And putting marabou in a mixed hoofstock paddock has been an outdated practice for decades now....

There is a lot to laud when it comes to the Tierpark, the narrative and financial situation have been turned around completely and there have been plenty of good developments that would have been impossible under the former director. But not all is good...
 
@lintworm Sadly, I have to agree with some of your points here. I also really don't get why he would not let them put nets over these ponds. They even could have made it a donation project so they could have made (some of) these aviaries into quite attractive walk-through exhibits. I really like the ones in the zoo and always wanted something similar for the Tierpark.

But why shouldn't you put Marabou on a large exhibit with ungulates (for now they only share an exhibit with giraffes and pelikans and they seem quite alright to me, but I'm not an expert of course)?
 
markmeier said:
But why shouldn't you put Marabou on a large exhibit with ungulates (for now they only share an exhibit with giraffes and pelikans and they seem quite alright to me, but I'm not an expert of course)?
Click to expand...
As far as I know the problem is not the marabous’ cohabitation with other animals. The problem is that the storks (and pelicans for this case) have to get their wings clipped or worse be pinioned because of the fact that they are in an open top enclosure. And I wouldn’t expect any zoo to net over a giraffe enclosure for the sake of the birds in there anytime soon.
 
markmeier said:
But why shouldn't you put Marabou on a large exhibit with ungulates (for now they only share an exhibit with giraffes and pelikans and they seem quite alright to me, but I'm not an expert of course)?
Click to expand...
Methinks the main problem is that in order to be placed in an open-ended enclosure with giraffe, the birds need to be pinoned.
Whilst clipping was a common practice in zoos in the past [and it remains common in American zoos to this day], it is now agreed that clipping brings a major disadvantage for a bird's life - for hopefully obvious reasons. And so now many zoos have adopted a more modern and ethical practice - to build aviaries for flight birds of any kind so that they are able to retain this innate ability.
 
markmeier said:
@lintworm Sadly, I have to agree with some of your points here. I also really don't get why he would not let them put nets over these ponds. They even could have made it a donation project so they could have made (some of) these aviaries into quite attractive walk-through exhibits. I really like the ones in the zoo and always wanted something similar for the Tierpark.

But why shouldn't you put Marabou on a large exhibit with ungulates (for now they only share an exhibit with giraffes and pelikans and they seem quite alright to me, but I'm not an expert of course)?
Click to expand...

Apart from pinioning/wing-clipping the marabou (and the same goes for crowned cranes) are no match for hoofstock and apart from the risk of being trampled, they won't breed in such a set up.
 
Oh, I know about this issue of course. If it was up to me, potentially flying birds would only be kept in large aviaries. But what if the damage is already done (besides the marabous this also is true for all of the flamingos and pelicans in the park as well as some of the cranes and probably other birds)?
 
That's what I wanted to ask, if the marabou was an already mutilated bird or if it recently got this treatment. If that's the later case it's quite disappointing (Same thing as for the pelicans).
 
Less than a week after the grand opening of the two large Savannah exhibits, the Tierpark now gave some updates on their upcoming project: The Asia exhibit. They plan to open it this upcoming Summer (no exact date given yet). And it starts to look like it, as well. They even started putting the plants in. Apparently, they want to create a small river with a densely overgrown river bank, small and large rocks and some dead wood. But have a look for yourselves:

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Pictures: Tierpark Berlin

As I said, it looks much bigger and much better (as well as much more ready) than I had expected until now. I start to really look forward to this and I am already quite curious about the elephants (along with the honey badgers, hyraxes, weaver birds, aldabra giant tortoises and so on) or even lions and rhinos. At the moment, they really keep it coming.

And there already are so many great animals and enclosures. I'm afraid, I'll hardly find enough time to enjoy it all.

One recent highlight from YouTube (there is loads and loads on the dinosaurs but also on other living species):

Or here, one of my many favourite enclosures:
 
@markmeier What a great updates, vielen dank!

Do you think/know if more animals will join the new savanna complex?

I don’t know if it’s ever done before, but wouldn’t it be great if for example the reedbucks and gerenuks could join?

And while discussing birds, what about the koritraps and saddleback storks?
 
@willem I'm not so sure, but I don't think they plan anything like that. Also, the saddleback storks can still fly and live in an aviary. So they wouldn't really put them on there.

By the way: I just learned that marabous and pelicans are separated from the giraffes by "electric gras". So they don't have as much space as possible but they also won't be bothered by anyone now or even after the two large exhibits get connected.
 
Some minor updates:

The Pallas's Cats in the Himalaya zone have 4 kittens:
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Pictures: Tierpark Berlin

The Takins top this off with 7 young ones:
2 Golden Takins, 3 Tibetan or Sechuan Takins and 2 Mishmi Takins.

The Silver Pheasants (Berliozi subspecies) have 4 chicks:

The Philippine Mouse Deer are two females.
 
There are some fresh little movies with some of the latest offspring:

Collared Brown Lemurs:

Przewalski's Horse:

Pallas's Cats:

Elk's:

Native Greylag Geese:

Also, a short picture series of the Asian Golden Cats (the male speciman):
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Pictures: Tierpark Berlin

Aaaand, they finally published the annual report for 2022:
Geschaeftsbericht_AG_2022.pdf (zoo-berlin.de) - unfortunately, so far it's only in German

As we just discussed this, I looked up some of their statistics:

species count - and new: percentage of endangered species
species of mammals: 168 (2021: 160, +8)
EW: 1, CR: 11, EN: 15, VU: 20, NT: 12, LC: 40
species of birds: 203 (209, -6)
EW: -, CR: 6, EN: 9, VU: 11, NT: 14, LC: 60
species of reptiles: 53 (52, +1)
species of amphibians: 13 (13, +/-0)
combined percentages: EW: -, CR: 17, EN: 20, VU: 14, NT: 10, LC: 38
species of fish: 57 (68, -11)
species of invertebrates: 145 (143, +2)
combined species: 639 (645, -6)
EW: 1, CR: 7, EN: 10, VU: 11, NT: 10, LC: 44

EW: Extinct in the wild, CR: Critically Endangered, EN: Endangered, VU: Vulnerable, NT: Near Threatened,
LC: Least Concern (some species cannot be evaluated due to lack of data etc.)

So, there is not much of a dynamic for better or worse. As for reptiles and amphibians, the numbers should slightly rise with the new elephant house. Not sure about the birds, though. They could still drop a bit, but hopefully not much lower.
 
According to another zooforum user, they still had 4 Pikas by the end of 2022. I didn't really find/ look it up in the report for myself, but this user is very reliable. But I guess it doesn't make much of a difference for visitors, as they aren't on display (I heard you can peek through a bit at times, but so far I didn't manage to see any of them).
 
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