I've looked through this thread and not seen the answer, but where did they get the bull shark? Did they go out and capture one from the wild? Will this be the only Australian facility exhibiting bull sharks?
Sydney Zoo $36 million zoo with roaming African animals planned for Blacktown
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I've looked through this thread and not seen the answer, but where did they get the bull shark? Did they go out and capture one from the wild? Will this be the only Australian facility exhibiting bull sharks?
As of February 2019, Sea World Gold Coast had at least one Bull Shark.
Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) - ZooChat
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I don't know the answer to this, but the most likely situation is that they caught one from the wild. Most sharks are wild-caught (generally speaking), and Bull Sharks are found naturally in the rivers of tropical Australia so obtaining one would be "relatively" easy for an Australian aquarium.
Bull sharks can be found in the Parramatta River, just up the road from Sydney Zoo. Aquariums do not seem to have the same take from the wild problems zoos do.
Sydney Zoo has now received Eyelean the giraffe from Monarto.
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Opening a zoo from scratch is a world first? “It’s never been done before”? Who do they think they are kidding? Well I guess 7 News for a start.
You have to be a bit careful with news reports. The "it's never been done before" from Burgess may not even be in relation to the reporter's "opening a zoo from scratch" comment. It does sound like something he would say about the opening of the zoo, but it may not be being used accurately by the editor of the clips.
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Andrew Swales
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I see your point, aren't all zoos built from scratch to start with?
We certainly did it at Hamerton in 1990. Admittedly the Zoo only had lemurs, marmosets, meerkats, wallabies and birds on day one, but all the services, shops, loos, car-park etc (and a Zoo Licence) were all in place. The site had been a wheat-field until just a year before - every blade of grass and plant was new too. The animals were re-housed from our private collection which remained off-show, but every stick in the zoo was new and 'from scratch'.
The following article provides 42 photos of the new Sydney Zoo. Going through the photos there are images of two more exotic mammals for Sydney Zoo; Capybara (photo 13 out of 42) and Dromedary (photo 35 out of 42).
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp...w-major-zoo-more-than-100-years-opens-weekend
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp...w-major-zoo-more-than-100-years-opens-weekend
I am just wondering if the Sydney zoo might look at obtaining Hippo in the future after the Hippo IRA is completed, I believe it was one of the species that was wanted at the start?, I believe one of the current exhibits was made for this reason and has currently another species living in it.
Yes, the original plan was to exhibit Common hippopotamus.
Then in 2018, they were replaced on the map by Bison and Capybara (see first map); which eventually resulted in a Dromedary camel exhibit being built on this spot (see second map).
They don’t have the space to build an exhibit for them now without phasing out another species and remodelling their exhibit.
It would be an extremely expensive acquisition (renovation, import and upkeep), so I have no doubt they’ll see sense and leave the exhibiting of this species to the open range zoos.
2018 Plan:
2022 Map:
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I understand what you have said. They were one of the species of interest from the beginning, Hippos would be a much bigger drawcard than camels I believe.
Common hippopotamus would indeed be a huge drawcard - especially compared to camels.
While none of the other main city zoos in the region would consider it given they’ve all phased out Common hippopotamus for space reasons, it’s worth considering Sydney Zoo imported elephants (which went against the regional trend of phasing these out of city zoos) - so I agree it can’t be completely discounted.
It would also give them another edge over Taronga Zoo - which lacks the Cheetah, Spotted hyena, African wild dog, Sumatran orangutan and Hamadryas baboon that Sydney Zoo hold.
The other option would be Pygmy hippos
The other option would be Pygmy hippos
That'd be the perfect compromise. I imagine Sydney Zoo would be very low down on the list for receiving one given the priority will be on finding mates for the existing unpaired Pygmy hippopotamus, but the long awaited Hippopotamus IRA would allow them to import - or receive an Australasian bred hippo after the bredding programme kicks off again.
Since they have imported so many of the animals now, including 2 young bull elephants I don't believe a pair of Pygmy hippos is going to throw them to much.
Since they have imported so many of the animals now, including 2 young bull elephants I don't believe a pair of Pygmy hippos is going to throw them to much.
Yes, they’ve imported several of their species from international zoos - which long term will be an asset to our regional breeding programmes.
The Pygmy hippopotamus (if imported) would likely come from Europe. Most of our imports come from Europe and Asia - in part due to North America being time consuming to arrange an import from; and also due to some of our regional populations being managed via the European breeding programme.
It would have been great had Sydney Zoo acquired gorillas, with the three males at Orana Wildlife Park making way for a breeding troop to be housed there (they even got as far as identifying a silverback to head up this breeding troop). Six years on and that breeding troop could have contained several infants (males and females) to be distributed between establishing a bachelor troop in Orana’s second exhibit and boosting female numbers in Australian breeding troops.
At this point, it seems likely Sydney Zoo’s first great ape birth will be to Leakey the Common chimpanzee. Hopefully the beginning of a flourishing colony.
That space is ridiculously small for sun bear. It’d be a shame to see the species disappear from the region, but I feel it’s inevitable at this point in the absence of viable options to import more bears.
Continuing the discussion here: @Osedax @Jambo @ElephasMaximus
That would make sense - I can eventually see Sydney expanding on their current space. Initially I think Sydney had plans to do this sooner rather than later, but obviously the reality of things has kicked in and those plans for expansion were merely hypotheticals at that point.
I did also notice what appeared to be a Leopard on one of the old maps, in what is now the larger of the two Tiger exhibits. The tigers interestingly seem to be in the African precinct (not sure as to why).
A Sri Lankan Leopard makes sense considering the region was quite heavily focused on starting a regional breeding program for them at that point in time. They seemed to be one of the regions designated Leopard species after the mass phase outs of the early 2000's.
Melbourne now has KI Kangroos too after previously holding Eastern Greys, so it does make me wonder whether it came down to a question of availability re. the Cumberland Plains Bushwalk.
Also re. the Sun Bears, the map doesn't show them in the Red Panda exhibits specifically but more so in that general vicinity.