Taronga Zoo heman has died

[Zoo_Boy]

i replied with this

Thanks again for such a great response, I think these are only among about 4 responses I have received from the zoos, I have asked questions over the past 4 years, and hardly ever get a response so thank you.



On another note is it possible to get any information on the master plans for both zoos, as I am a member of a forum called Zoobeat (www.zoobeat.com if you are interested, go to the Taronga master plan thread and a thread about taronga's Brazilian tapir for our views on the master plan of Taronga) and we are just enquiring to what the zoo will actually be doing.



If you would take the time to think about our responses, as we are simple visitors to zoos, who have a vast knowledge of zoos etc, and it may be worth looking at some of our ideas from time to time, as we know what the visitor wants, and especially Taronga, is a difficult zoo to navigate, and one of the dilemmas we are discussing is the new gung facilities, which we think will not be interpreted in to the Asian trail when, you have gorillas stuck on the trail to him, we viewed this also as a sore thumb when it comes to the African precinct, when the gorillas are so afar away. So we thought that if this was turned into a new orang-utan facility, with an o-line, it would connect and flow through the Asian trail well. And in mind of this move the gorillas to new facilities near the chimpanzees, removing the current ostrich exhibit, and surrounding lands to make a new trail. All this can be found in detail at the site I mention previously.



Thankful for the response, and please come to our site just to look and read. Thank you very much.

 

[patrick]

what do you think you doing ?

inviting them to come and view our forum! i thought we were phasing-out lurkers? we don't like them cos they don't contribute!

besides i don't want them to know of any of my wonderful ideas, unless of course they want to pay me....

on burma, lets just wait and se what happens i brought up the issue of her future, threw in a potential argument, some of you threw in some valid counter arguments and in the end i successfully ended up losing perspective and having a dig at taronga/dubbo zoo again over its elephant management, which i for one am even getting tired of hearing! (bored of myself, now thats depressing!)..

as the zoo said they will be reviewing her situation soon (though i think its likely she'll stay), so lets just wait till then and see....

 

[ZooPro]

Patrick - you're assuming that none of the lurkers we have are zoo people sitting back watching what people write about them? That would almost certainly account for some of Zoo_Boy's "diseases"!

 

[Zoo_Boy]

ok once and for all "my lurker' are the people who sign up once and we never see again, but i admit, there are people who have signed up as member, but dont contriibute, but you see them down the bottom appearing. i am upset people just sign up once and are never seen again. im sorry guys ill drop it.

 

[Coquinguy]

patrick, thats right about burma and bullens. ive always considered taronga to have an obligation towards her, but if a circus has an elephant they cant handle then euthenasia would be a likely option. so shes probably better off at the zoo.
as for taronga's facilities, i would not call them inadequate, having seen the finished product for myself. im just guessing here, but if one of taronga's females was to turn aggressive im sure the zoo would be able to modify the exhibit to suit her. from a husbandary perspective it would mean no walks through the zoo, or wash downs without chains, but taronga's keepers would be skilled at handling difficult animals by now after dealing with heman and burma. and new races, restraint chutes and crushes could be installed in the barn.
im also confiden that the bull facilities will be adequate and designed with protected contact.
i dont think that heman and burma got a rough deal. for heman western plains was the best compromise and with burma specifically, taronga is dealing with an old, aggressive animal...

 

[patrick]

aw, i dunno man. i think you could say living in a ****** exhibit for almost their entire lives could be considered getting a rough deal.

 

[Coquinguy]

and finally, burma's exposure to potential herpes virus could be viewed a smore of a calculated risk. she was, after all, sent to western plains for retirement, not as a holiday which she would return from. i think, as you said, it was a 50/50 chance that she would drop dead first, or heman. looks like he drew the short straw.
and the comparison to melbourne's situation is a little ridiculous too, im sorry. you know as well as i do that melbourne's animals are a great deal younger than heman and burma were, so melbourne had an obligation to rehouse them. whats more, with mek-kepah aged in her 30;s, not 50's, melbourne did the right thing and consider her welfare and social needs for the next two decades.
although the two bulls were both fertile, im sure that if taronga and melbourne had each others elephants than trail of the elphants would indeed look very different. if 4 new elephants were going to melbourne, then a 5th animal, my bet is that if heman and burma were at melbourne then they would have ended up in retirement at weribee probably if heman and burma were in their 30s taronga's solution may have been very different.
its funny too, from the point of view of someone interested in how people relate to animals, to see how much debate about a lone elephant can spark. they really are magnetic animals, and though they are intelligent, my guess is the forum would be much more likely to intensely debate the welfare of lone elephants than fruit bats, or peccaries, or agoutis.