I visited this place on Saturday. I spent about 4 hours there, but a good hour and a bit was sitting around waiting for various animal encounters as part of the package we purchased.
I try to be very careful to judge every zoo on its merits. Not all of them are going to be capable of matching it with Melbourne or Taronga. In this case, I went to Bali Zoo fully prepared for an 'Indonesian zoo' experience with some things that would upset me, coming from a rich country which has perhaps moved past some of the prevailing attitudes in Indonesia. I left with a different angle on those things, which I'll explain below.
First impressions are good. A fine entrance, a genuinely beautiful looking restaurant (though later we saw the lunch included in many packages, and we were glad we declined. Food poisoning on a plane would suck). The surrounding landscape would win design awards in a US zoo for its plausible 'rainforest' look complete with Hindu temple across a small river (there are thousands of temples in Bali, including in most family properties, and this probably belonged to a family in the village).
We got the 'Short Trek Safari' at $US60 each, and that included a 15 minute elephant ride, feeding the elephant, the animal encounters session and the zoo admission itself. Most people who were present were doing either this or an even more expensive up-sold package. The average tourist to this place would be worth over $50 to the zoo, at a guess.
The elephant ride was an enjoyable experience that will not be repeated in Australia anytime soon, I suspect. It starts in a manicured area in which the elephants walk on bricks around a large Hindu altar, with birds including eclectus, grey parrots, a sun conure and a chattering lory perched in small trees. They obviously were unable to fly. We saw some (not all) of the back of house elephant facilities as well, later in the walk. I could be wrong, but it looks like the elephants are chained in the open air on concrete overnight. All six elephants (including a youngish looking bull, I think) were working constantly whilst we were there. I fear that the eles tend to be either working or are chained up, and don't have the opportunity for free interactions as a herd. I hope I'm wrong.
The majority of visitors, I think, have an elephant ride and many of them are longer 30 minute rides or even longer treks into the surrounding village. Incidentally, even the 15 minute ride crosses a public road which bisects the zoo, requiring a security guard to control traffic at the crossing point all day!
Then it's on to the zoo itself. The first enclosure is for African lions. As an aside, I really don't see the need for this place to have exotic species. There's only a handful - the lions are joined by two dromedaries and several sitatungas, and macaws feature in signage but I didn't see them. Indonesia has such a wealth of animal diversity that I think a strict focus on native and endemic fauna might help to give the zoo a more coherent raison d'etre than it has at present.
Anyway, back to the lions. This exhibit is the first to offer an interactive experience. If you have already done your elephant ride (and we had to do it first, before entering the zoo, to my mild annoyance) you walk up a slight incline and find a lioness and several seven month old cubs staring in your direction. Get to the enclosure and you find out why, as a staff member invites you to pay to attach some meat to a zip line into the enclosure to feed the lions. You can pay more again to feed them through the bars. We declined both opportunities. We did see somebody using the zip line a few minutes later. I guess it's enrichment, though all the lions have to do is wait until the meat comes within reach and then grab it.
The first of several very small tiger enclosures is next, for a couple of Sumatran tigers. Later in the zoo there are Bengal tigers, including a white tiger which was suckling a single orange cub. It was locked in a night den that was perhaps 3x2m, as another Bengal, presumably the father, was out in the exhibit. The exhibit might have been 10x10m. Another tiger enclosure had three tigers that looked to be sub-adults all the same age. A tiger cub is also used in animal encounters, and I get the impression that tiger breeding here happens with great regularity. Certainly the place has more tigers than it can adequately house (which I'm tempted to say would be 'none').
Other carnivorans on display are sun bears in a truly awful cage. It's a mud pit with two wood platforms and a concrete night den the only other substrates for the three sun bears. It might have been roughly 20mx8m for the three bears. One had developed a habit of constantly gnawing at a hind leg. Binturongs had no less than four cages, all identical in design and consisting of mesh cages about 2m wide, maybe 4-5m in length and about 2.5m high. They contained a total of 10 binturongs and one was used in animal encounters.
We had a photo with it during the animal encounters session and it seemed alert and at least mildly interested in what was happening. The session was done in a weird way. Visitors were given numbers to go up, turn by turn, and have a photo first with the binturong, then a crocodile, then a tiger cub. But everybody had to get the photo with the binturong before you could move onto the next animal, so there was a lot of waiting around involved. At least 50 groups of people had the numbers. We left after the binturong, partly because it was our last day in the country and we had a couple of other things to do, partly because we didn't really like the way it was done.
A separate animal show had performing otters, a variety of birds and ended with a one year old lion cub on a chain that visitors were permitted, free of extra charge, to have a photo with. I'm no expert but I did not get the impression it was sedated in any way.
Primates include two or three Japanese macaques in a cage I would consider just adequate for a pair of cockatoos and maroon leaf monkeys (a group of about eight) in a decent fully meshed enclosure that looked like it had previously been about three or four smallish cages that had been converted into one. A sunda loris went unseen in a tall, cylindrical cage. There was welding going on nearby and it was probably stressing it out. There are about eight different enclosures for members of the gibbon family. About four cages - each several metres high, with a fair amount of climbing opportunities (mostly the roof of the cage) and about 10m long - held siamangs, agile gibbons and silvery gibbons. More of these species were housed on two smallish but not indecent islands and two unacceptably small cages that were less than five metres long each. The gibbons, like the tigers, seem to be proliferating beyond the zoo's preparedness (and note the use of this particular word) to provide adequate housing for them.
Then there was Jackie. Jackie is a lone male Bornean orangutan. Visitors were sold carrots and fruit to feed animals throughout the zoo and that includes Jackie, who has to be thrown the food over a moat deep enough to drown in. There is a sign warning visitors that Jackie sometimes throws food and other items back at the visitors. At one stage I saw a staff member at Jackie's enclosure, from the elephant ride. When I later returned to the area, there was nobody there. Middle-aged orangs are prone to diabetes - there was no indication that there was any kind of diet control going on, or that Jackie's interactions with the public were supervised. He had a couple of wooden bars to climb on, but I didn't see him get off the ground.
Ungulates were represented by babirusa and wild boars in small yards. I've never seen any wild pig species before and cannot judge their adequacy, though each consisted of bare, hard earth and not much else. Three species of deer - Timor, Bawean and Muntjac. The Timors and Muntjacs were in the petting zoo, along with some of the sitatungas. I pointed at the muntjac and asked a staffer in charge of the petting zoo section what species they were, as I have never seen any before. "Deer", she said. I asked what type of deer and she shrugged her shoulders. Hopefully she did know what they were, but didn't know the English name. There's also the afore-mentioned dromedaries in what were, by this part of the zoo, familiarly small yards.
The best exhibit perhaps was a walk-through aviary that had fruit bats of two different species (don't ask me which) and a smattering of birds including Southern Pied Hornbills, eclectus parrots, a couple of pigeon species, peafowl and red junglefowl. Other birds included a variety of cockatoos, more eclectus, various Indonesian birds of prey, rhinoceros and wreathed hornbills. There's a single-wattled and a double-wattled cassowary (one of each) near the lions and tigers. Oh, and Australian pelicans and sacred ibis.
There's a smattering of reptiles, including false gharial, saltwater crocodile (one with a pool so small it could not stretch out fully, if it tried to do so), Asian forest tortoise, Asian river terrapin, reticulated python and blood python. I don't remember any lizards but that's not to say there weren't any.
Now, l knew before going there that I wasn't going to a western quality zoo, and was more than prepared to judge it on its merits as a zoo in Indonesia. But. This zoo had made at least $US4000 in revenue by the time we had left at 1:10pm. I make that estimate simply by multiplying the number of people doing the animal encounters session in the restaurant by the lowest up-sell package. And there was a second round of animal encounters later in the day *and* the Night at the Zoo package that evening.
At a conservative guess, this place is making $US10,000 a day during the dry season. The average wage in Bali is around $10 a day. It's as if the zoo's revenue is made in the developed world, but all its expenses are in the developing world. This is one of the most profitable zoos in the world.
Yes, there is a lot of building going on around the zoo. At least four little projects are under way at the moment. But none appeared to be creating more space for animals or enriching their environments. One was upgrading the entrance path. Another was possibly expanding the wild boar exhibit, but I think it was actually creating a second one of about the same size. Meanwhile, the zoo's animal inventory is too big, with gibbons and big cats, in particular, seemingly poked all over the place because breeding has out-paced development.
Incidentally, at $24 a head, minimum, the crowd was about 99% foreign tourists. Our driver said that he would only ever take his family once, and considering a family ticket would set him back around a week's income, that's fair enough. This place caters to a western (and Chinese/Japanese) audience, and with the money it is making it should be wasting no time in becoming the best Southeast Asian zoo outside Singapore or Malaysia. It's too small, in terms of land size, to ever compete with Singapore but it could become a brilliant small zoo with a focus on Indonesian wildlife to make it a truly unmissable stop on a trip to Bali. Instead, I fear it is a very lucrative cash cow as it is now, and the animals' interests are being ignored.
I understand that Bali Zoo is coming from a long way back. However, given the costs of operating in Bali and the amount of income that is coming in, I don't think this is any excuse for unacceptable enclosures. I don't think this place is deliberately cruel towards its animals, but I think it is guilty of neglect and indifference in certain cases.
I try to be very careful to judge every zoo on its merits. Not all of them are going to be capable of matching it with Melbourne or Taronga. In this case, I went to Bali Zoo fully prepared for an 'Indonesian zoo' experience with some things that would upset me, coming from a rich country which has perhaps moved past some of the prevailing attitudes in Indonesia. I left with a different angle on those things, which I'll explain below.
First impressions are good. A fine entrance, a genuinely beautiful looking restaurant (though later we saw the lunch included in many packages, and we were glad we declined. Food poisoning on a plane would suck). The surrounding landscape would win design awards in a US zoo for its plausible 'rainforest' look complete with Hindu temple across a small river (there are thousands of temples in Bali, including in most family properties, and this probably belonged to a family in the village).
We got the 'Short Trek Safari' at $US60 each, and that included a 15 minute elephant ride, feeding the elephant, the animal encounters session and the zoo admission itself. Most people who were present were doing either this or an even more expensive up-sold package. The average tourist to this place would be worth over $50 to the zoo, at a guess.
The elephant ride was an enjoyable experience that will not be repeated in Australia anytime soon, I suspect. It starts in a manicured area in which the elephants walk on bricks around a large Hindu altar, with birds including eclectus, grey parrots, a sun conure and a chattering lory perched in small trees. They obviously were unable to fly. We saw some (not all) of the back of house elephant facilities as well, later in the walk. I could be wrong, but it looks like the elephants are chained in the open air on concrete overnight. All six elephants (including a youngish looking bull, I think) were working constantly whilst we were there. I fear that the eles tend to be either working or are chained up, and don't have the opportunity for free interactions as a herd. I hope I'm wrong.
The majority of visitors, I think, have an elephant ride and many of them are longer 30 minute rides or even longer treks into the surrounding village. Incidentally, even the 15 minute ride crosses a public road which bisects the zoo, requiring a security guard to control traffic at the crossing point all day!
Then it's on to the zoo itself. The first enclosure is for African lions. As an aside, I really don't see the need for this place to have exotic species. There's only a handful - the lions are joined by two dromedaries and several sitatungas, and macaws feature in signage but I didn't see them. Indonesia has such a wealth of animal diversity that I think a strict focus on native and endemic fauna might help to give the zoo a more coherent raison d'etre than it has at present.
Anyway, back to the lions. This exhibit is the first to offer an interactive experience. If you have already done your elephant ride (and we had to do it first, before entering the zoo, to my mild annoyance) you walk up a slight incline and find a lioness and several seven month old cubs staring in your direction. Get to the enclosure and you find out why, as a staff member invites you to pay to attach some meat to a zip line into the enclosure to feed the lions. You can pay more again to feed them through the bars. We declined both opportunities. We did see somebody using the zip line a few minutes later. I guess it's enrichment, though all the lions have to do is wait until the meat comes within reach and then grab it.
The first of several very small tiger enclosures is next, for a couple of Sumatran tigers. Later in the zoo there are Bengal tigers, including a white tiger which was suckling a single orange cub. It was locked in a night den that was perhaps 3x2m, as another Bengal, presumably the father, was out in the exhibit. The exhibit might have been 10x10m. Another tiger enclosure had three tigers that looked to be sub-adults all the same age. A tiger cub is also used in animal encounters, and I get the impression that tiger breeding here happens with great regularity. Certainly the place has more tigers than it can adequately house (which I'm tempted to say would be 'none').
Other carnivorans on display are sun bears in a truly awful cage. It's a mud pit with two wood platforms and a concrete night den the only other substrates for the three sun bears. It might have been roughly 20mx8m for the three bears. One had developed a habit of constantly gnawing at a hind leg. Binturongs had no less than four cages, all identical in design and consisting of mesh cages about 2m wide, maybe 4-5m in length and about 2.5m high. They contained a total of 10 binturongs and one was used in animal encounters.
We had a photo with it during the animal encounters session and it seemed alert and at least mildly interested in what was happening. The session was done in a weird way. Visitors were given numbers to go up, turn by turn, and have a photo first with the binturong, then a crocodile, then a tiger cub. But everybody had to get the photo with the binturong before you could move onto the next animal, so there was a lot of waiting around involved. At least 50 groups of people had the numbers. We left after the binturong, partly because it was our last day in the country and we had a couple of other things to do, partly because we didn't really like the way it was done.
A separate animal show had performing otters, a variety of birds and ended with a one year old lion cub on a chain that visitors were permitted, free of extra charge, to have a photo with. I'm no expert but I did not get the impression it was sedated in any way.
Primates include two or three Japanese macaques in a cage I would consider just adequate for a pair of cockatoos and maroon leaf monkeys (a group of about eight) in a decent fully meshed enclosure that looked like it had previously been about three or four smallish cages that had been converted into one. A sunda loris went unseen in a tall, cylindrical cage. There was welding going on nearby and it was probably stressing it out. There are about eight different enclosures for members of the gibbon family. About four cages - each several metres high, with a fair amount of climbing opportunities (mostly the roof of the cage) and about 10m long - held siamangs, agile gibbons and silvery gibbons. More of these species were housed on two smallish but not indecent islands and two unacceptably small cages that were less than five metres long each. The gibbons, like the tigers, seem to be proliferating beyond the zoo's preparedness (and note the use of this particular word) to provide adequate housing for them.
Then there was Jackie. Jackie is a lone male Bornean orangutan. Visitors were sold carrots and fruit to feed animals throughout the zoo and that includes Jackie, who has to be thrown the food over a moat deep enough to drown in. There is a sign warning visitors that Jackie sometimes throws food and other items back at the visitors. At one stage I saw a staff member at Jackie's enclosure, from the elephant ride. When I later returned to the area, there was nobody there. Middle-aged orangs are prone to diabetes - there was no indication that there was any kind of diet control going on, or that Jackie's interactions with the public were supervised. He had a couple of wooden bars to climb on, but I didn't see him get off the ground.
Ungulates were represented by babirusa and wild boars in small yards. I've never seen any wild pig species before and cannot judge their adequacy, though each consisted of bare, hard earth and not much else. Three species of deer - Timor, Bawean and Muntjac. The Timors and Muntjacs were in the petting zoo, along with some of the sitatungas. I pointed at the muntjac and asked a staffer in charge of the petting zoo section what species they were, as I have never seen any before. "Deer", she said. I asked what type of deer and she shrugged her shoulders. Hopefully she did know what they were, but didn't know the English name. There's also the afore-mentioned dromedaries in what were, by this part of the zoo, familiarly small yards.
The best exhibit perhaps was a walk-through aviary that had fruit bats of two different species (don't ask me which) and a smattering of birds including Southern Pied Hornbills, eclectus parrots, a couple of pigeon species, peafowl and red junglefowl. Other birds included a variety of cockatoos, more eclectus, various Indonesian birds of prey, rhinoceros and wreathed hornbills. There's a single-wattled and a double-wattled cassowary (one of each) near the lions and tigers. Oh, and Australian pelicans and sacred ibis.
There's a smattering of reptiles, including false gharial, saltwater crocodile (one with a pool so small it could not stretch out fully, if it tried to do so), Asian forest tortoise, Asian river terrapin, reticulated python and blood python. I don't remember any lizards but that's not to say there weren't any.
Now, l knew before going there that I wasn't going to a western quality zoo, and was more than prepared to judge it on its merits as a zoo in Indonesia. But. This zoo had made at least $US4000 in revenue by the time we had left at 1:10pm. I make that estimate simply by multiplying the number of people doing the animal encounters session in the restaurant by the lowest up-sell package. And there was a second round of animal encounters later in the day *and* the Night at the Zoo package that evening.
At a conservative guess, this place is making $US10,000 a day during the dry season. The average wage in Bali is around $10 a day. It's as if the zoo's revenue is made in the developed world, but all its expenses are in the developing world. This is one of the most profitable zoos in the world.
Yes, there is a lot of building going on around the zoo. At least four little projects are under way at the moment. But none appeared to be creating more space for animals or enriching their environments. One was upgrading the entrance path. Another was possibly expanding the wild boar exhibit, but I think it was actually creating a second one of about the same size. Meanwhile, the zoo's animal inventory is too big, with gibbons and big cats, in particular, seemingly poked all over the place because breeding has out-paced development.
Incidentally, at $24 a head, minimum, the crowd was about 99% foreign tourists. Our driver said that he would only ever take his family once, and considering a family ticket would set him back around a week's income, that's fair enough. This place caters to a western (and Chinese/Japanese) audience, and with the money it is making it should be wasting no time in becoming the best Southeast Asian zoo outside Singapore or Malaysia. It's too small, in terms of land size, to ever compete with Singapore but it could become a brilliant small zoo with a focus on Indonesian wildlife to make it a truly unmissable stop on a trip to Bali. Instead, I fear it is a very lucrative cash cow as it is now, and the animals' interests are being ignored.
I understand that Bali Zoo is coming from a long way back. However, given the costs of operating in Bali and the amount of income that is coming in, I don't think this is any excuse for unacceptable enclosures. I don't think this place is deliberately cruel towards its animals, but I think it is guilty of neglect and indifference in certain cases.
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