Darling Downs Zoo Darling Downs

Z

Zoo_Boy

Well-Known Member
Also darling downs zoo has a new website, very colourfull, and looks to be a great zoo, that is buildling up slowly. Great job to the owners who have had between then 50 years in native and excotic handling.

Darling Downs Zoo

Also, sad to hear, this zoo is facing licencing troubles with the QLD GOVT. The Zoo is not open much, only weekends, and holidays, and QLD legislation requires a zoo to operate min 5 days a week. But the zoo has 300 animals, and is not located in a tourist spot. So there is very limited resources to open for more than weekends etc.

I wish all the best to the zoos owners, and hope thsi zoo can continue to grow, it has an impressive exotic collection, and is building great open habitats. I hope that this zoo can continue to oeprate, as it has actually been forced to close as of midnight 2night, as its licence expires.

I sincerly hope this does not happen, as this zoo looks fantatsic, and a future participant in many breeding programs country wide. Goodluck, and best wishes to the owners.

darling downs zoo - Google News
 
What kind of DUMB legislation can tell a zoo when it HAS to be open?
( The state govt. is not paying the bills.)
 
legislation

I can only guess it is a technicality to differentiate it between a zoo and a private collection (?)

As it is not on a tourist circuit , perhaps it can be "open" on demand
If they were able to do that , then everyone that goes there will be able to say that it was actually opened at the time of their visit .....
 
Ara said:
What kind of DUMB legislation can tell a zoo when it HAS to be open?
( The state govt. is not paying the bills.)
Click to expand...

The sort of SENSIBLE legislation that is attempting to privent under-resourced private individuals from obtaining exotic animals that they cannot house long-term, in a responsible way. The end result is invariably that the other zoos are called on to pick up the pieces and relocate the animals when it all goes belly-up.

NB Before anyone jumps down my throat, I am not inferring in any way that this is the case with Darling Downs Zoo. I am merely answering Ara's question, as a general statement.
 
Throat jumping

Zoopro ,
I cant speak for anyone else , but I aint going to jump down your throat ( at least not for this thread anyway :D )
I think this is a very good answer to the question , and it is hopefully trying to avoid another Cairns/Mareeba saga .
I am sure that Zoopro wishes all the best with Darling Downs Zoo if it is serious about becoming a bona fide zoo -- Queensland could do with another zoo
 
ZooPro said:
The sort of SENSIBLE legislation that is attempting to privent under-resourced private individuals from obtaining exotic animals that they cannot house long-term, in a responsible way....
Click to expand...

exactly!!! i see absolutely nothing wrong with, as a condition of license, zoos are forced to be open five days a week. without minimums, nothing is stopping private individuals on using zoo licenses to acquire exotic pets.

if the darling downs zoo is not on a tourist route and having trouble staying open 5 days a year, then i ask, why on earth did they build it there?
 
Victoria has similar laws with requirements that zoos be open daylight hours. I'm not sure that the number of days required is as great as SA or Qld. The objective is to stop people circumventing the licensing laws by claiming their private collection is a "zoo".
 
Most zoos in North America are open either 364 or 365 days a year. To close down more often than that makes me wonder about the welfare of the animals, as many captives spend closing hours locked inside their night quarters. I certainly hope that when zoos close for a day or two they don't keep such animals continually indoors.
 
While I'm being a grumpy old @#$%&, let me go off on a tangent and say that this is another aspect of modern zoos that I don't particularly like - the practice of only allowing animals into their main enclosure when the zoo is open to the public, and keeping them cooped up in off-display cages or yards the remainder of the time.

I don't know if this practice is long established in other countries' zoos, but it's a fairly recent innovation in Australia, and becoming more and more widespread. Until not too long ago, most animals had access to their public display area 24 hours a day, allowing them to develop a sense of territory. Nowadays, all too often, the enclosure in which the public see the animal is simply a " stage" on which to display it, with "hot" wires to keep them from spoiling the pretty vegtation etc.

Look at the off-display areas and they are usually as bare and barren as any old-time cage.
 
i can't much comment on this as its not something i know a lot about, but certainly its worth a thread of its own as is an interesting discussion.

i do know however that some of melbourne's animals, such as it elephants, tigers and lions are given access to their enclosures at night.

i also know that others such as the gorillas and many other primates are not.
 
Darling Downs Zoo

Planning for the Darling Downs Zoo commenced early in 2001. As part of that planning process, dialogue was conducted with the Queensland state government about their requirements for the establishment and operation of a new zoo. That dialogue was quite extensive and included discussion about the opening hours of the zoo. The government, quite rightly, did not want to allow a situation to develop in this state where an individual could keep exotic animals more or less as a rich person's status symbol. [Think Notre Dame in NSW]. The government accepted our contention that the site for the new zoo was in a rural area - not in a tourist area and that mid-week visitation was going to be minimal. After much discussion, the government accepted our proposal that the new zoo would open to the public on weekends, public holidays and Queensland state school holidays. Additionally, the zoo promotes mid-week group bookings by schools, social clubs and old folk's groups. By taking bookings only during the week we know in advance what our visitation figures will be and can staff the facility accordingly. All this was agreed to by the government BEFORE this property was even purchased. Had they insisted back then on 5 days per week or 40 hours per week this zoo would not have been built.

Once we started building this zoo all hell broke loose! Executives from certain coast based parks [who should have known better and should have had more to do with their time] launched in to a tirade of untruthful claims about us. One of them told us to our face that the zoo would never be allowed to open. It was claimed that the zoo was unsafe [FALSE], that the zoo had no vet [FALSE], that the zoo fed maggoty meat to our carnivores [FALSE] and so on and on. They even claimed that we had no money [well I guess we never have ENOUGH money to do all the things that we want to do!]. The upshot of this rubbish was that the government sent in a team of inspectors to do the place over. The upshot of that inspection was that the zoo opened to the public - albeit some weeks later than planned thanks to the delaying tactics. Nine months later these same executives made the same claims to the "Courier-Mail" newspaper. To his eternal discredit, the tame journo that they used would not even come out here to see the zoo for himself. The paper used cropped photos to misleadingly illustrate their story and it did us a lot of damage. People still remember that beat up today - over two years later. Because the two executives were employed by huge parks owned by mega-companies and held high office in the Australian zoo industry's "umbrella" organisation, the government took their claims seriously and some of that mud still sticks today. However, the zoo was deemed to be safe by experts [the enclosures withstood 120 kilometre an hour winds only a few weeks later] and the RSPCA gave us a glowing report on our animals health. Despite that, only yesterday the government claimed in a Press Release that they had concerns about the welfare of our animals and the conditions that they are kept in! How can we win? No doubt this claim was designed to direct the media away from their bungling of the "opening hours" issue.

To us, "opening hours" is a non-issue. We have been open to the public during those hours for over two and a half years now and the government has continued to relicense us during that time. Last August, as part of our application process for ARAZPA accreditation/membership, the state government was asked to inform ARAZPA of any outstanding issues that they had with us. "Opening hours" was not mentioned. Yet in November it suddenly became such a burning issue that that we were threatened with non-licensing. We can only wonder just who is pulling their strings. If we were to open for five days a week, we would have to employ staff to sit in an empty entrance building twiddling their thumbs while waiting for non-existent visitors to materialise. As labour is our single biggest cost that would have a negative effect on our viability.

The government has failed to communicate with us since early December - over seven weeks. They did so by phone yesterday only after media pressure. We have now been given a three month license which is just long enough to get the government past the politically sensitive elections coming up in March. The issue has not been addressed or resolved - just delayed.

The good news is that the Darling Downs Zoo is a viable enterprise in it's present form and at it's current staffing levels. Following the media exposure of this latest attack on us we have had phenomenal expressions of support from the public. Our building program for 2008 continues unabated and it is our great ambition to be accepted in to ARAZPA this year.

Steve and Stephanie Robinson
Darling Downs Zoo
 
I would like to state that I visited just before the allegations were made (was it two years ago, time does fly) and I saw no evidence of the allegations. From what I observed, the animals seemed fit and healthy, and if they were old, then their illness could be attributed to age (eg the jaguar who I might add was wandering round her enclosure quite confidently). The zoo is no Melbourne/Taronga but that is to be expected. And I beleive the living consitions are a huge improvement on what they would have had. I can't comment on the opening hours as it is not something I have knowledge. Thankyou for providing us with your comments
 
Ara said:
I don't know if this practice is long established in other countries' zoos, but it's a fairly recent innovation in Australia, and becoming more and more widespread. Until not too long ago, most animals had access to their public display area 24 hours a day, allowing them to develop a sense of territory. Nowadays, all too often, the enclosure in which the public see the animal is simply a " stage" on which to display it, with "hot" wires to keep them from spoiling the pretty vegtation etc.
Click to expand...

Ara I know that you don't speak from experience of working in zoos in Australia, becuase this statement is simple untrue. Having worked in zoos for 35 years, I can tell you that confining animals to more secure areas than a publicly accessible display area has been the case for most animals, in most zoos.

And having first hand experience of what can happen to animals that are left on display, when idiots break into zoos at night, confirms in my mind that in most cases, this is a very sensible practice for the welfare of the animals.

Or when something disturbs animals at night and you find them the next morning with thier necks broken after they have run into fences in fear.

Just have a bit of a think about why some animals are confined to their night quarters, and you might realise that is done for the safety of the animals.

Look at the off-display areas and they are usually as bare and barren as any old-time cage.
Click to expand...

And in most cases, many of these animals spend most of their time sleeping in their "bare barren off-display areas".
 
Steve Robinson said:
If we were to open for five days a week, we would have to employ staff to sit in an empty entrance building twiddling their thumbs while waiting for non-existent visitors to materialise. As labour is our single biggest cost that would have a negative effect on our viability.


Darling Downs Zoo
Click to expand...

I presume staff are normally present? Have you considered some other ideas:

- radio intercom so visitors can call staff to the gate.
- Honesty box, and not staffing the entrance.
- FOC entry on weekdays, with a donation box.?
 
Darling Downs Zoo

Django said:
I presume staff are normally present? Have you considered some other ideas:

- radio intercom so visitors can call staff to the gate.
- Honesty box, and not staffing the entrance.
- FOC entry on weekdays, with a donation box.?
Click to expand...


Thanks Django. We had considered many ways of trying to accomodate the state government on this issue. And obviously, as a business, we don't want to let any admission money get away from us!

We didn't feel that the radio intercom would work too well - particularly as Murphy is alive and well out here. You can just bet that we would get a persistent visitor demanding to be admitted NOW right at the very moment that we had an animal in a situation that was going to take time to conclude.

Honesty box and not staffing the entrance would not work in this era of DIShonesty. A shop full of thousands of dollars worth of foodstuffs and souvenirs would be just too tempting to some people. Also, our public risk insurance policy would not accomodate people being allowed to wander in willy-nilly. These concerns would also apply to a FOC/donation box entry system as well.
 
Our zoo is open just over 6 months a year. However, during those other months many of the animals are allowed access to their exhibit space, weather permitting. (We're in northern Indiana--just had 8+ inches of snow with winds and then ice/sleet last night.) We also have school groups that visit for special programs all winter and we try to have animals visible for them as well. Nearly every winter enclosure has an outside holding area.
 
@Rookeyper: I was checking out the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo yesterday (via Z-mail) and was shocked to see that you guys are still closed. Even zoos in Edmonton, Toronto and Calgary, being at much higher latitudes, are open year-round. Do you know your annual number of visitors? Have you ever been open year-round, or has it always been a 6 month window? I do realize that the majority of zoos in the northern hemisphere experience steep drops of visitors in the colder months, but closing for half the year is shocking. That's a ton of cash being spent on food, employees, etc with nada coming in.
 
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