Prague Zoo Praha floods & rebuilding

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docend24

Well-Known Member
Sometimes when I discuss some topics in which Zoo Praha is quite succesful it turns out to be more about Zoo Prague, their animals, exhibits etc. than the original topic. So I founded this thread to continue in these discussion in this thread.

It would be useful to quote the last comment of the former discussion to get get know everybody here what was all about.

So here http://www.zoobeat.com/65/bornean-clouded-leopard-23468/ in thread about clouded leopards we got off topic.

Going WAY off-topic here. But Prague is my all-time favorite Zoo. The park is divided in two parts by a huge cliff-face on which is mountain ungulates are housed, very impressive and the by any stretch the best mountain ungulate exhibit possible.

The bottom part of the zoo was more or less destroyed by a flood in 2002? if i'm right and has been almost totally rebuild. The park itself is huge, and the collection surpasses anything i've seen anywhere else. There's a lot of decent exhibits, a few VERY good ones and only a few not so good ones (just the elephants and hippos, standard small city-zoo exhibit), with no VERY bad ones.

Amazing place to be.
Click to expand...
 
jwer said:
Going WAY off-topic here. But Prague is my all-time favorite Zoo. The park is divided in two parts by a huge cliff-face on which is mountain ungulates are housed, very impressive and the by any stretch the best mountain ungulate exhibit possible.

The bottom part of the zoo was more or less destroyed by a flood in 2002? if i'm right and has been almost totally rebuild. The park itself is huge, and the collection surpasses anything i've seen anywhere else. There's a lot of decent exhibits, a few VERY good ones and only a few not so good ones (just the elephants and hippos, standard small city-zoo exhibit), with no VERY bad ones.

Amazing place to be.
Click to expand...

I agree, this is exactly why I'm a big fan of the zoo. 2002 is right. They didn't rebuild everything, in most cases they just reapired or renovated things but they have a chance to make it newer and better. Big pavilons like of carnivores and big mammals (elephants, hippos) are at the same place but they wetre forced to re-think many things to lessen the danger and make any further evacuation easier. The most imporatant thing was that Prague inhabitants identified with their zoo after this tragedy and any disputes between the diector and employees (he is the first non-zoologist director) ended. (to be continued)

I will add some links and information about floods as soon as I find more time to do it.
 
In the zoo there are some incredible pictures from the flood, like people swimming in dinghy with huge (sedated) gorilla.
 
The best pictures I saw were of the hippo bull sticking his head out of a window in the first or second floor of a building after the flood-and how he was brought "down to earth" again...;) Among the saddest must have been the drowned female hippo and the elephant bull...
 
These pics I don't remember. Tell more!

I still don't understand how they moved biggest animals in a hurry, and where they kept them.
 
I just log in for a few minutes, so just the basic -
- they moved two rhinos using a crane - they went to Poland to Zoo Opole and never came back
- they put carnivores to sleep to evacuate them; the ones with problems with narcosis were last on list and it was fatal for a baer and a lion
- they walked with three elephants cows outside their exhibit to bond them to trees higher in thze zoo area (it was succesfull althought the african one panicked a bit and run away about a hundered meters before they calm her down - the elephants were never outside their exhibit before; and they saw a hippo for a very first time (hippo female swam into the exhibit)
- male elephant Kadíra had to be shot to not let him drown (he couldn't be let free becasue of the public safety)
- female hippo had to be shot just before she could dive and escape to the river (status of two other hiipos in pavilon was unknown by this time so they had to keep a gun man on the roof of the pavilon - male Slávek survived as he swam up into the keepers corridor, the daughter of the paired drowned).
- sea lions - just few weeks old male was evacuated in advance just in case, others 1;3 swam away - the male Gaston was catched somewhere near Dresden in poor state and died even before they transported him back to zoo.
One of the females later gave birth a baby, female called Abeba, which is the last Gaston offspring. Current group is 1;4 but temporarily not on display, half of the group is even deponated in other czech zoo because their pavilon is under reconstruction.
-gorillas escaped into the anti-flood tower (sadly young six year old male - handreared, saved/bought from a sheik and finally socialised in the troop - left the tower for an unknown reason and drowned). Other goriilas were evacuated on rafts sleeping (a really dangerous thing).
- some animals were put in other animals exhibit, some were in deponation in other zoos (not only czech ones)

They got wrong information and expected smaller floods so they hadn't enough time to do more. But some animals like the elephant male simply couldn't be saved even if they had more time because they couldn't transport such a heavy and dangerous animal in limited time.

The biggest stories of these floods for zoo were the story of Gaston and the story about gorillas - they tried hard to form a troop (with a history of many years without a succesful breeding), they formed an unbalanced one and as soon as they stabilized the troop, floods came. That's one of the reason why Prague gorillas are in a spotlight after they re-formed the group, against odds acquire a new male - Richard and first gorilla baby in czech zoos was born.

I try to find more time during upcoming weekend to add links and pictures and translated some stuff from Czech.
 
I should add that of course some animals activist critised director Petr Fejk because of the death of an elphants etc.

The survived elphants were 0;2 asian and 0;1 african. The african female (Sabi) went to La Fleche to let Prague keep only an asian ones (Sabi didn't live long she was crtically injured after an attack of another female in La Fleche, I don't remember if she broke her neck or landed on head on a fatal way, doesn't matter much).
Prague has now 1;2 asian elephants, two old females and Naigh Theing (spelling?) for whom they are trying to bring a young female once they build the new pavilon for elephants in the upper part of the zoo (another pavilon for hippos is planned in the upper part of the zoo, too). Hippoes are now 2;1 the survivor Slávek got a new female and now he is playing with their son Tom.
 
A fascinating story - someone should write a book, if they haven't already.

Nice to hear the happy endings for the gorillas and hippos. I was quite impressed by Prague's gorilla exhibit - does it date from before the flood, or is it new?

The old elephant exhibit was easily the worst thing about the zoo - especially with the animals locked inside the tiny house in winter, and showing signs of stress. I'm glad to hear a new exhibit is coming.
 
Sun Wukong said:
The best pictures I saw were of the hippo bull sticking his head out of a window in the first or second floor of a building after the flood-..
Click to expand...

They even published this photo as part of a 'multi view' postcard I have- I thought that was pretty poor taste as he has blood all over his jaws from smashing himself about...Glad to hear he survived though.

I saw film of the doomed elephant which was shot to save it from drowning. Very sad.
 
more info, links, pictures

I think one of the best summary of what happened is this one Prague Zoo Flood written by the director itself. Than there is a story about it on the official web Flood 2002 - Zoo Praha with some pictures below (remember that the level of water is not on its top on the indoors ones).

Unexpected new arrival christened at Prague zoo - 11-08-2003 - Radio Prague a year after

This link http://www.asianelephant.net/praha/praha2.htm# is good to get a better perspective about elephants/hippos drama - pictures 04,28,67 show outdoor exhibits (from left: female elephants, male elephants, hippos; rhinos' one was on the other side of the pavilion) - picture 36 shows corridors above elephants indoor exhibit - on one of them the male hippo survived (then he find a way into the one above rhino exhibit and broke a window there).
 
Elephants

Kádira
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the last picture won a Czech Press Photo award

Female elephants in their enclosure with an unexpected guest

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zoo_praha_povodne2002.jpg
 
I'm going to translate bits of stories which are not included in english version on the zoo site.

Sea Lions - they were swimming calmly in their exhibit until a viewing footbridge flew into their exhibit and they panicked and left. The pregnant female (keepers were suspicious about it but thought that if she was preganant she would lost it ; well apparently not) returned in a while. Others escape into the Vltava river. Mother of the three month old male (which was evacuated in advance just in case) was saved from under a bridge where she was stuck among branches and other floating things. The last female was cought by fire squad and already had inflammated eye. And Gaston was caught in Lutterstadt near Dresden. Apparantly exhausted. Died even before he crossed borders between Czech rep. and Germany.

Rhinos - female Pongola was evacuated without problems but male Patrys was shot at second attempt and then lay down with his head under water, so they had to hold his head above while they preparing carring harness. Then in the air he almost overbalanced.

Elephants - I have to correct myself - Gulab, the older Asian female run away few meters and only Sabi the African one hadn't left the enclosure before. I made a mistake in one of my previous comments.

Kádira - there was no box which he wouldn't destroy; even if any helicopter could lift him, he could be put to sleep only for around 90 minutes otherwise his weight would damage his organs in a fatal way; and most importantly there were no exhibit for a fully grown elephant bull at the time; even a destruction of a wall between his exhibit and exhibit of the females was considered but the explosion would be too risky and then a hippo occured there - later it became obviuos it wouldn't be high enough; a ponton putted down by helicopter would let him free if the water would keep rising - and it turned out to be technically impossible.

I think I summed up the main things. This was really emotional to gather ti and read it all again.

Too bad the zoo don't have na unpdated english version of their web.
But the good source of the main news about Zoo Prague in English is Prague Zoo | ABC Prague sometimes they make a mistake but generaly it is ok.
 
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