The Walter Zoo Gossau published today the plans for their next big project. Between the flamingo enclosure, the savannah house and the nature trail the zoo is planning a new house with two floors. This house is fully underground and the biggest project in the zoos history. The total coast are around 16 mio swiss francs and the total area is about 4’165 squaremeters. In the whole house there will be a big focus on education and conservation.
In the ground floor there is a conservation house planned with a cinema with a short movie about conservation and the IUCN Redlist with their campaign "Reverse the Red". After that the visitors will discover a coral reef tank, two breeding stations and multiple terrariums with threaten species like the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) and the partula snail (partula nodosa). In the end there will be a display about what the visitors can do in everyday life to protect the nature.
One floor below is everything about biosluminescence and the darkness of the night. At first the visitors will go through a cave themed corridor with information about biosluminescence and why the darkness of the night is important for animals. After that corridor the visitors are comming to a cave with glowing animals and plants like Mt. Buffalo Glow-Worms (Arachnocampa sp.) and Pyrocystis fusiformis. There the visitors will take a 5min long water boat ride with 1 km/h and drive throw that glowing cave. Last and not least the visitors are comming to multiple tanks with for example helmet jellyfishes (Periphylla periphylla), warty comb jelly (Mnemiopsis leidyi) and firefly squids (Watasenia scitillans) and to a sience centre with interactive learing stations.
On the top of the house, there are outdoor enclosures for the european ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus) and european hamster (Cricetus cricetus).
They created a complete own website for that project. Unfortunately the texts are only in german, but it's possible to translate the text through the browser.
Das Leuchtturmprojekt