In connection with the opening of the new Elephant Valley at Prague zoo this weekend, I translate a few snippets from a related article, based on the press conference.
Zoo Praha za?ije v sobotu akci desetiletí - P?ÍRODA.cz
The opening ceremony of the Elephant Valley starts at 11:00 on Saturday 30th of March.
The new home of the 1,7 elephant herd is a heated house of 1400 m2 and three connected outside pens of 8500 m2 (this is the space usable by animals, the whole construction site was over 1,5 ha, if I remmember correctly).
The name of the last calf is still not decided and will be announced only during the ceremony.
The house was planned as a strictly technical building not accesible for visitors at first, but it has changed later on. (there is a window for visitors in the outside wall of the house now).
The elephants are under surveilance of 40 cameras (they are on-line so everybody can see them too).
The elephants won´t use the outside pens during the ceremony because of the cold weather, that would not go well with the calf and two cows imported from Sri Lanka last year. (we have the coldest spring in 10 years).
The herd was formed surprisingly quickly and their bonds are strong. Keepers had to stop to try to lead at least the acclimatised animals into the outside pen - the (cow) group did´t allow to be separated.
The whole Elephant Valley construction costed 300 million CZK ($15 million).
The visitors path around the exhibit is half a kilometer long and contains artefacts imported from Asia to offer a unique athmosphere. There is also an elephant rides simulator.
The zoo is changing its handling policy to protected contact. Now the keepers have almost no direct contact, the younger cows´ve learned to work through a training wall, only the old Gulab won´t be subjected to this.