Pairi Daiza Visit to Pairi Daiza

vogelcommando

vogelcommando

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
Last weekend payed a visit to a collection which has a special meaning for me, Pairi Daiza. For about 20 years ( 1994 -1996 ) I worked in this collection and partly helped t build it up.
After I left I only visited it once around 2001 and this weekend was also the second time. In the past 12 years lots of things have changed and I must say it's one of the best collections I've visited sofar !
On Zootierliste I had already looked what to expect and many of the animals from this list I've seen but also a lot not !
Pairi Daiza is one of the few collections in Europe with both African and Asian elephants ( among them a Sumatran ) and also animals like the Steller's Sea-eagle, Shoebill ( only one seen ) and Plough-share tortoise ( also one seen ) are highlight of this park.
Also the themes of the park like South East Asian temples, Chinese and Japanese gardens, a nice build Australian area and so on are superb !
It's a little strange that such a good place is so under-represented here on Zoochat but hopefully other Zoochatters will 'discover' this place and more info willl appear !
 
I visited this place a year ago, and thought it massively impressive in many ways - even if a lot of the theming was not to my taste. Also, while some of the enclosures were very well designed and attractive, others were not (the hyenas were in what looked like an old car park, complete with "crashed" aeroplane). The bird collection is superb, though, and in itself justifies a trip down the twisty roads of rural Belgium.

I am very interested to read that you were involved at the zoo's inception, Vogelcommando. Was the intention always to develop the place into a general zoo, or was it, initially, planned to remain as a bird park? Was it apparent at the off that growth would be so rapid? And from where did the funding for the start-up come?

That such an enormous zoo can grow from nothing in less than two decades is genuinely rather exciting!
 
20 years ago in the period from 1994 to 1996 I worked.....and so on. OK sorry, you can read it on 2 different ways :)
 
the park has 2 shoebills: the reproductive female (3 hatched eggs of which 2 animals are still alive in Zurich) and a non reproductive male from zurich.

sadly the reproductive male died.

the park only has 1 ploughshare tortoise.
 
forumbully said:
the park has 2 shoebills: the reproductive female (3 hatched eggs of which 2 animals are still alive in Zurich) and a non reproductive male from zurich.

sadly the reproductive male died.

the park only has 1 ploughshare tortoise.
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How did they acquire the ploughshare?
 
did the other ploughshare tortoise die? They had a pair didn't they?
 
Does anyone have more information about the conficated Ploughshare tortoise - article, newspare etc. no matter which language - because I have some doubts about the 'legality' of this confication !
 
I suspect this was the heist that traded yniphoras illegally and quite comically disappeared from the public view in the Netherlands. Rumours have had it that they then turned up in Belgium and Czech Republic ... However, curiously ... the police department drew a blank!!! :mad:

It would be decent if this specimen were sent to Ojai where adults are maintained. There the chances of breeding success would be very much the higher.
 
DDcorvus said:
@KB didn't these Dutch disappearing ones ended up in New York?
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I really do not know that ... I think the investigator's leads went ... sparse. Whether that had to do with a lack of expertise on the team or their lack of manpower ... I equally unable to answer. But certainly there was a ... wide fishnet to swim thru and a high demand market and a slow to react force. :(
 
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