Auckland Zoo Auckland Zoo's Website

[Axl]

I hate to say it, but Auckland Zoo's news section of their website has truly gone to the dogs.

Everytime I go on the only news is some promotional garbage about the latest zoo music exhibition or event. I barely bother going on there anymore. Occasionally there will be something worth reading but I feel they are forgetting that people would like to hear about the animals for a change.

I have a print out of their zoo news from the website in 1999 and it's fantastic, updates on otters, rhinos etc. What happened?

Finally, many many events seem to be occurring (eg. progress on Te Wao Nui, progress on the elephant herd, deaths of baboons, arrival of baboons (2009), meerkat births, otter deaths, developments within the lion pride, arrivals of fur seals, red panda arrival and subsequent breeding, golden cat transfers, galapagos island tortoise transfers, alligator introductions etc.) that are not being mentioned.

If it were not for the fantastic keepers who kindly take time from their busy schedules to answer all our questions and to the awesome people on ZooChat who are usually the first source of news, we would be unaware of many of these events.

 

[zooboy28]

Yes, the news section is terrible! There are updates on the maintenance section, which are useful, and allow some developments to be followed. I guess that they might not want to draw attention to negative events like baboon deaths (even if they were very old), or transfers out of the zoo (especially of offdisplay species). They do have news bits for events like giraffe births, red panda import, etc, but these tend to be covered by newspapers as well, so maybe the zoo doesn't bother to do its own news release. Definitely agree that they should do more though.

 

[daveb]

I would urge you to provide this feedback directly the Marketing & Comms Team at Auckland. I know they would appreciate the feedback.

 

[Coquinguy]

i absolutely agree with this,

 

[zooboy28]

I'm not quite sure what you're aggreeing with glyn

But anyway, I emailed Auckland Zoo's 'senior media and communications coordinator', about the news section, and she replied, saying:

Many thanks for getting in touch, and for your feedback and thoughts, much appreciated.

We are constantly updating things on the website as we can, and of course, a lot of news and activities as they happen get reported on via our Facebook and Twitter pages. These will keep you up to date with what's going on at the Zoo.
Auckland Zoo | Facebook Auckland Zoo (aucklandzoo) on Twitter

The Zoo is a not-for-profit organisation, so we do have limited resources. As we obtain more resources to improve our website, we will have quick home-page access to things like Facebook and Twitter and other features where we can have the facility for daily posting of what might be happening with animals/work of our keepers. There's lots we'd love to do!

As I think you're aware, we do have regular media releases and they are always posted on our home page under the heading NEWS FLASH - in the right left hand corner. For example, today we currently have a story about Liam Finn and Phoenix Foundation concert happening this Friday.

By their nature, News releases need to be major news, so while things like a Galapagos tortoise moving to another facility are important, it is not major news, and we wouldn't put out a release about it. Things like this get talked about on Facebook/Twitter, and can also be put under 'WHAT'S HAPPENING' where appropriate. As far as animal related happenings go, we're constantly in touch with keepers - and 'WHAT'S HAPPENING' includes our NEWS section - where we also post all our media releases - so you can check back through these. At present we do have more Event related stories than animal stories. In terms of animal stories - some months are busier than others, it just depends what's happening. It's likely in upcoming months there will be a lot more news-related animals stories, and for major ones, we will do media releases.

For animal-related information, another good area on the website is our 'Explore the Zoo' . Here we have a special section on a diverse range of animal enrichments, with links to YouTube videos. Auckland Zoo - Enrichment at Auckland Zoo


The Home page is also used to highlight news - be it animal related or an event or a campaign. You might notice this week's home page is highlighting Seaweek and the special Seaweek exhibition we are having, along with daily Sea Lion/fur seal encounter.


COMING UP:
-The reopening of our Sea Lion and Penguin Shores exhibit - featuring 8 little blue penguins, along with shorebirds in the aviary part of this exhibit. Once we have a confirmed date for when the animals are all in there, we will be letting everyone know. It's been quite a while since we've had penguins in this aviary, so it'll be great to see!
-Integration of our male red panda Sagar with female Amber. We'll keep you posted on these things.

Thanks again for your feedback, and for ZooChat's interest in what's happening at the Zoo.

I do follow their facebook page, but I don't feel it has really had any interesting news posted, certainly nothing unreported on the main website. They do put up some good pictures sometimes though, and do regularly answer questions on there, which is handy for finding out stuff. I can't say anything about their twitter updates though.

 

[Kifaru Bwana]

I agree with your basic train of thought. However, I suppose what transpires from the response is that there is somewhat a quid pro quo here. To me it looks like they really have quite a small communications department, so their time and effort that might be spent on fully updating a website is limited. I am not saying it be so, but that resources seem be directed towards where their impact on the general public is maximised.

However, I am the first to agree that an informative + well designed website is more than just the sum of 0+1= more than 1. To put it plainly: an inspired communications mogul can do a wand on attracting more folks to the zoo grounds or bringing the community closer to what is going down ...

I will post on some news items you found lacking exposure on their website worthy of discussion on their own (e.g. Galapagos tortoise) in the respective Auckland zoo thread on our own site.