Historical Berry Springs zoo proposal

A

Abbey

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
When looking for a non-paywalled version of the article about the new development at Taronga Western Plains Zoo, I stumbled upon this document from 1982: https://tfhc.nt.gov.au/__data/asset...0_Establishment-of-a-Zoo-at-Berry-Springs.pdf

It is a proposal resulting from Cabinet decisions of the Northern Territory government, to develop a zoo at Berry Springs. I gather this is what resulted in Territory Wildlife Park.

Thought it may be of interest, including the reflections upon what the public expected of a zoo in the early 1980s, at a time when opinion was in the midst of shifting towards creating zoos with expansive, naturalistic exhibits as we see today.
 
Abbey said:
When looking for a non-paywalled version of the article about the new development at Taronga Western Plains Zoo, I stumbled upon this document from 1982: https://tfhc.nt.gov.au/__data/asset...0_Establishment-of-a-Zoo-at-Berry-Springs.pdf

It is a proposal resulting from Cabinet decisions of the Northern Territory government, to develop a zoo at Berry Springs. I gather this is what resulted in Territory Wildlife Park.

Thought it may be of interest, including the reflections upon what the public expected of a zoo in the early 1980s, at a time when opinion was in the midst of shifting towards creating zoos with expansive, naturalistic exhibits as we see today.
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It was an interesting note that they decided not to focus on elephants and large carnivores due to the cost of developing and maintaining a collection comprising these animals - with the acknowledgment that what they could acquire with the funds they had ($4 million) would be poor competition for the main Australian zoos (Adelaide, Taronga, Melbourne and Perth).

Instead they chose to “adopt a unique emphasis on Australian fauna.” Today, this approach would be considered anything but unique - with a multitude of small zoos/wildlife parks housing primarily natives.

In retrospect, I think it’s a shame they discounted large exotics at the beginning. All zoos start somewhere and with the exception of Sydney Zoo - many others have started small and then built up over the decades.
 
@Zoofan15 @Abbey @Patrick Keegan @Zorro

Yeah it was a shame actually they went for that decision not to consider exotic 'mega-fauna' right from the establishment plans. For a long time the Territory Wildlife Park did well on its focus with many threatened Australian species particularly from the northern areas (an old acquaintance did his ecology phd doctorate on breeding Northern Quolls at both the Territory Wildlife Park and islands off the mainland from Arnhem land for release into Kakadu, they gave the infant Quolls infant cane toad meat laced with a naugesic ointment to teach them to avoid trying to eat adult cane toads when in the wild, they did well on the islands apparently but caused a considerable decline of a lot of naturally occuring Grassland Melomys 'mice', fortunately not a threatened species themselves, but sorry I digress yet again). Think that while the Territory WP has had a lot of success with its focus and commitment to local species, this indication of direction right 'off the bat' is what inevitably led to the proprietor and senior management at Crocodylus Park seeing an opportunity in the late '90s (after existing as a crocodile park with a handful of other native reptiles, birds, macropods and buffalo for little over half a decade prior) to jump at the opportunity of housing big cats, primates etc beginning about 22-23 years ago starting with Lions and 'Bengal' Tigers, because Darwin region had no exotic mammals on public display still at the time.
Well obviously the remarkable exotic collection of large ungulates was at Tipperary Station not far away from 1992-2003 but that was a private property and wealthy Warren Anderson's own little venture/fiefdom. Often wondered if a publicly opened zoo or wildlife park had been able to secure that collection instead of him.
 
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I guess any the end of the day it comes down to the money, going native would be cheaper and less trouble to form a collection, just look how many animals Sydney zoo has imported. Importation is complex and expensive not to mention time consuming.
 
Zorro said:
I guess any the end of the day it comes down to the money, going native would be cheaper and less trouble to form a collection, just look how many animals Sydney zoo has imported. Importation is complex and expensive not to mention time consuming.
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That’s very true - though I’m surprised they couldn’t envisage doing more with $4 million, which was a lot of money in those days (1982).

To put it into perspective, Auckland Zoo released details of their planned Bornean orangutan park in 1985 - which cost an estimated $1 million. The complex included two exhibits, a day room and two night houses.

They could have similarly allocated $1 million to a complex on a grand scale; $0.5 million to two or three smaller exhibits for bigs cats, baboons etc; $1.5 million on natives; and $1 million to support the long term running costs of the facility (in the event there was no further provision for this).
 
Zoofan15 said:
That’s very true - though I’m surprised they couldn’t envisage doing more with $4 million, which was a lot of money in those days (1982).

To put it into perspective, Auckland Zoo released details of their planned Bornean orangutan park in 1985 - which cost an estimated $1 million. The complex included two exhibits, a day room and two night houses.

They could have similarly allocated $1 million to a complex on a grand scale; $0.5 million to two or three smaller exhibits for bigs cats, baboons etc; $1.5 million on natives; and $1 million to support the long term running costs of the facility (in the event there was no further provision for this).
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At the end of the day Auckland has an incredible award winning exhibit complex a wise move
 
Zorro said:
At the end of the day Auckland has an incredible award winning exhibit complex a wise move
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That was $1 million estimated for 1987-2017 complex when plans were drawn up in 1985. The 2020 complex would have cost significantly more (the entire South East Asia precinct was $62 million).

The 1987 complex was still very impressive in it’s day. While many zoos in the region held their orangutans in barren cages, Auckland Zoo designed an open air park - which remained a highly quality exhibit for the majority of its 30 year lifespan.
 
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