Chester Zoo Gorillas at Chester

no, I think they should wait till they can build top of the range world class specialist housing.

Good things come to those who wait,

I think, IF the Giraffe's move out to be part of a mixed savannah, that the Okapi should inherit the giraffe paddock and be a mixed exhibit with black and white Colobus Monkey or pygmy Hippo.
 
jde7582 said:
Does anybody think that now as the bio dome is delayed, for who knows how long, there is a possibility they could use the giraffe house as a new gorilla house, bringing in a keystone species with reduced costs? Just an idea for discussion.
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I think that is a very feasible idea. I also thought that the old Orangutan House could have also been remodelled for Gorillas quite easily too after RORA was built There is a perfectly good outdoor island there too (which housed Gorillas for a while anyway in the past) and is seemingly little used nowadays? This could have been properly landscaped and maybe the watermoat filled in(to give extra land area) and a glass viewing wall/window put in instead, all without the enormous expense of an entirely new enclosure. The same applies to the Giraffe House as it lends itself to the same renovations. Bristol Zoo have done this with their old Elephant area and its a perfectly workable exhibit for their Gorilla group.

If Chester wait until the biodome is built (which could be light years away) they will in the interim continue lacking an important species. If they got them sooner and built up a good social group they could always move them to brand new quarters at a later date.
 
Pertinax said:
If Chester wait until the biodome is built (which could be light years away) they will in the interim continue lacking an important species. If they got them sooner and built up a good social group they could always move them to brand new quarters at a later date.
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I agree and even using the current giraffe enclosure I think they could do something very effective similar to the Bristol or Dublin enclosures.

I remember the gorillas from my early childhood and think it would be great if Chester had them again, somehow along with hippos, it feels that they are a missing jigsaw piece at Chester.
 
Pertinax said:
If Chester wait until the biodome is built (which could be light years away) they will in the interim continue lacking an important species. If they got them sooner and built up a good social group they could always move them to brand new quarters at a later date.
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I agree entirely, and I look forward to seeing this exhibit you speak of.




Wait, you are talking about hippos, right? :p
 
is there no way Gorillas can be exhibited in the islands development?

I just think that if Chester is to get a new animal exhibit with as big a hype as Gorillas, that there enclosure should be world class and custom built. It needs to be competing for best Gorilla enclosure in the UK if not the world. And that enclosure has to be ready for their arrival if its not to damage Chesters image to the general public. if they really need to build up a social group 1st, can't this be done off show.
 
Waddi said:
is there no way Gorillas can be exhibited in the islands development?
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It's a stretch the imagination to say Africa is an 'Island' then maybe :p.

In seriousness though, do Chester suffer for not having gorillas and hippos? I have heard a lot of people say that they need gorillas particularly, and I would like to see them at Chester, but I would rather wait until they can be moved straight into a custom built enclosure.

Chester has the highest visitor numbers of any UK zoo/wildlife park, and this they have managed without hippos, gorillas, polar bears, koalas or pandas. So in short, I think Chester has enough 'abc' species for it to get by, and the absence of these few, to me, doesn't really feel like anything's missing (and let's face it, no zoo has the complete set of ABC's so I don't see why it is so important for Chester to 'fill the gaps')
 
Maguari said:
Wait, you are talking about hippos, right? :p
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You could apply it to Hippos as well as, or instead of, Gorillas, though decent top class accomodation for Hippos might be harder to achieve in renovated buildings.

I don't know what time frame the Biodome has now been put into but I have a feeling I'll never see it! In the meantime Chester still lacks these species for years to come..
 
Javan Rhino said:
and let's face it, no zoo has the complete set of ABC's so I don't see why it is so important for Chester to 'fill the gaps')
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none in the UK maybe, but I think some in Europe do- having all of them would set Chester apart at the top of the pile in the UK.
 
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Waddi said:
And that enclosure has to be ready for their arrival if its not to damage Chesters image to the general public. if they really need to build up a social group 1st, can't this be done off show.
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Obviously they wouldn't be allocated stock until a (hypothetical) enclosure was ready for them.

By 'building up a social group' I meant adding to the numbers- when a new group is set up it normally comprises just a male and two females as there aren't enough available females usually to add more initially. So there's only a group of (say) 1.2 (or 3), which isn't much to fill a brand new 'world-class' exhibit- unless they were able to bring in a ready-made group which is a very rare occurrence. As Gorillas breed only slowly it might take 5-10 years, that's without any setbacks, for the founders to develop into a proper social group with young etc.(e.g. it has taken Bristol over 10 years to get to their current 7 animals)

An alternative is to take males and form a male only group- but they are never as satisfactory or interesting as an exhibit.
 
Pertinax said:
You could apply it to Hippos as well as, or instead of, Gorillas, though decent top class accomodation for Hippos might be harder to achieve in renovated buildings.

I don't know what time frame the Biodome has now been put into but I have a feeling I'll never see it! In the meantime Chester still lacks these species for years to come..
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I really feel that all zoos in Europe and North America would do well to scale down their plans fore the next 15-20 years at least, such seems to be the scale of the present slump. Chester is doing very well to get such a high attendance this year - it shouldn't be taken for granted.

On the animal front, just how many Eastern gorillas came into Europe in the 1960s, Pertinax? I remember seeing Mukisi in Antwerp in 1995, together with the two females that I believe still live there.

If any legal and ethical plan could be put together to get a population of graueri into captivity, it would surely be a good thing.
 
IanRRobinson said:
If any legal and ethical plan could be put together to get a population of graueri into captivity, it would surely be a good thing.
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I can't see it ever happening- maybe you are thinking Chester could do something with this species, particularly as they had them before? I think their availability is the problem, not husbandry though Antwerp were not very successful in breeding from theirs(with several failed births).

To my knowledge, the only 1960's arrivals of 'graueri' (in Europe) were the pair of animals to Chester, and the four(2.2) to Antwerp- though the 2 males seem to have arrived in 1959. Also two males that went to Hanover in 1963, one of them died the next year and the other was Mkubwa who was sent to the US. Plus the two youngsters at London (Rundi & Tanga) who didn't last very long. That was it afaik.
 
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Pertinax said:
So there's only a group of (say) 1.2 (or 3), which isn't much to fill a brand new 'world-class' exhibit-
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I see your point entirely, but would it not be better to have an exhibit which is custom designed to the Gorilla's needs and therefore encourages breeding and aids with the growth of group. It could be a mixed exhibit, then the exhibit would not look so empty if other animals were using the space the lack of gorilla's created.
 
Waddi said:
I see your point entirely, but would it not be better to have an exhibit which is custom designed to the Gorilla's needs and therefore encourages breeding and aids with the growth of group. It could be a mixed exhibit, then the exhibit would not look so empty if other animals were using the space the lack of gorilla's created.
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I don't see whay you couldn't do that with the giraffe area, I don't think people are suggesting anything half-hearted about converting it. Dublin and Bristol have world class, excellent exhibits (admitedly perhaps Bristol lack a little on the inside aspect) and there isn't a biodome in sight.
 
Yes even a couple of million pounds spent on the giraffe house would make it a world class exhibit, with large out door space, compared to the £100 million the dome was expected to cost, I loved the idea of it but that money could be spent all over the making the entire zoo world class and bringing in more species. It would also enhance the African plains area, and hopefully the Hippo enclosure would be considered too.

All these changes would enhance the zoo and come in around 10-15 million I would expect
 
jde7582 said:
I loved the idea of it but that money could be spent all over the making the entire zoo world class and bringing in more species.
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I agree entirely with this, I was so excited about the dome at first but the Chester I love is gardens, paddocks, landscaping. I love the black rhino enclosures, the andean bear enclosure, the monkey islands and would prefer the zoo continues in that direction and style. Might sound old fashioned but I think they could spend the money in much better ways.
 
Im not saying the biodome is needed, just that to be the best Gorilla Enclosure in the country it would have to be built from scratch.

I dont doubt that the Giraffe house and paddock could be converted in a fairly decent Gorilla enclosure, just not the best in the country.

On that note, in your opinion what is the best Gorilla exhibit in the country. And could a converted giraffe enclosure beat it?
 
Waddi said:
I see your point entirely, but would it not be better to have an exhibit which is custom designed to the Gorilla's needs and therefore encourages breeding and aids with the growth of group.
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With the right husbandry and group composition to start with, they will breed under most reasonable conditions. But of course any enclosure would be custom-designed for them, though not necessarily built from scratch for them.

Best Gorilla enclosure in the Uk? - very hard to answer- probably 'Palace of the Apes' at Port Lympne as it contains everything-spacious covered enclosure plus large open outside area too. Dublin is not UK but they have a brand new enclosure too. Any large existing building like the Chester Giraffe house has the potential to be remodelled for Apes and the outside area would be enormous for them.
 
I conclude that if the zoo wants gorillas in the next few years they would have to consider a new building,That building would need to be carefully designed and sited, so that if the dome is built and the gorillas are moved out, it could be modified and used for groups of other primates, perhaps langurs and gibbons.
I think that's another of Alan's good summaries of the situation. Getting a trio or so of Gorillas wouldn't be so difficult, but the expense of building their enclosure- either brand new or a remodelled existing one, might seem to preclude it happening anytime soon.

SORRY ALAN, DELETED MOST OF YOUR POST INSTEAD OF QUOTING, BY MISTAKE.:o
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