Minor News from Australian Zoos 2017

Zoofan15

Zoofan15

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
This is a new thread, prompted by a recent observation by one of our members that day to day 'news' from specific zoos are clogging up threads and ultimately limiting the potential for productive discussion. The idea for this thread is for people to post what they would consider small news, trivial news or updates they wouldn't consider ground breaking enough to be considered worthy of being posted in the news thread for that zoo.

It is up to the indiviudal to decide what should or shouldn't be considered 'minor news' but some ideas may include: births that occur frequently and unlikely to be of little interest to most people (eg. Fallow Deer at Altina), an animal species off display (eg. Fennec Fox at Perth Zoo off display), any news event clearly just for media coverage (eg. orangutan getting an Easter egg at Taronga Zoo), a zoo event that is not especially relevant to wildlife (eg. Music act performing at Auckland Zoo*, TipTop ice cream giving away free ice cream at Wellington Zoo*).

The aim of this thread is to free up the zoo news threads for actual news (signficant births or deaths, new arrivals or transfers or new exhibits), as well as discussions (this is ZooChat not ZooNews after all).

*Apologies for using New Zealand Zoos as examples here
 
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At mornato zoo,Rambo a recently arrived male bongo has been introduced to Isaac the zoos resident bongo.They are now on display.

BennettL
 
Chlidonias said:
this thread is just going to make it really hard to find items from specific zoos because they're all going to be jumbled up together...
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I can’t speak for the other gentleman who has posted updates in this thread but any ‘news’ I have posted in here, and I used the word ‘news’ loosely, are nothing but passing news I can guarantee nobody will want to search for down the line. I intended this thread to be for such matters, passing news that is unlikely to be of further interest down the line. If everyone would prefer to go back to using general news threads for each zoo, I respect that but I thought it’d be good to have a thread for the more trivial stuff. I certainly wouldn’t have dared to post that article about the browse (see above) in the ‘Melbourne Zoo News 2017’ thread! I'm glad you moved the discussion regarding the clogging up of threads to the general forum though, it'll be good to see what people in other regions think.
 
Taronga Zoo:

Residents and Council against Taronga Zoo's plans to build eco-lodge:

Council and residents slam Taronga Zoo's plan to build a luxury eco-resort inside zoo grounds

Taronga's Wildlife Retreat:

Building a better zoo: Taronga’s new Wildlife Retreat



Perth Zoo:

Second echidna puggle born:

It's a puggle's life — baby echidna introduced at Perth Zoo



Melbourne Zoo:

Tigers Hutan and Indrah turn seven this week:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...t/news-story/7fe234bc222afaa6c271edfa0b005710
 
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just a point I'd like to make (again) on what makes one piece of press "minor" and what doesn't. An article on trying to prevent the extinction of a species (the orange-bellied parrot above) is considered minor news or of minor interest?! Ditto for some of the other items on this thread, e.g. the first cottontops bred at Taronga in ten years is not minor news, unless all one is interested in is tiger and orangutan names.
 
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Chlidonias said:
just a point I'd like to make (again) on what makes one piece of press "minor" and what doesn't. An article on trying to prevent the extinction of a species (the orange-bellied parrot above) is considered minor news or of minor interest?! Ditto for some of the other items on this thread, e.g. the first cottontops bred at Taronga in ten years is not minor news, unless all one is interested in is tiger and orangutan names.
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One of the moderators on Zoochat suggested an appropriate definition for 'minor news' is news that is unlikely to generate further discussion. An example given was the birth of meerkats or various deer species that are commonplace across zoos in this region. I considered putting the Cotton Top tamarin birth annoucement in the Taronga Zoo news but used the reasoning above to justify putting it in here.as I don't consider the birth of a Cotton Top tamarin to be especially groundbreaking. If a zoo in Australia bred a fallow deer for the first time in 10 years, or even for the first time in it's history, I would put this in the minor news thread for the same reason, so why not Cotton Top Tamarins? BennetL obviosuly shared your opinion that this was more newsworthy than I did as he chose to put it in the Taronga forum a few days after I posted it here, where somebody challenged his decision, saying it belonged in the minor news thread.

I think it's obvious that there is gonna be considerable disagreement between the users of this forum on what consistitutes as news based on their particular interests. I personally am biased towards the megafauna. My interests include the big cats and great apes primarily as well as elephants, rhinos and hippos so I don't doubt my posts reflect that.

My knowledge of an interest in birds is largely restricted to condors and flamingoes at present so I didn't consider the piece on the parrot to be interesting enough to be considered worthy of the main Adelaide forum, however people on this forum would disagree and if they wanted to repost it somewhere more visable (the Adelaide forum) with the intention of starting a discussion, I wouldn't be offended.
 
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well all of what you just said is the very reason a "minor news" thread for all Australian zoos is a nonsense. You personally don't have an interest in birds, so would consider that news items concerning them are therefore unimportant and of little interest. Someone could repost links from here to elsewhere on the forum, but then there is just unnecessary duplication of everything and what's the point in that?

Imagine if a litter of "Bengal" tiger cubs is born at Dreamworld. That is relatively unimportant to me - tigers are two-a-penny and the cubs themselves are hybrids anyway. Should I post it here as "minor news"? You would say "of course not - they're tigers!" And so would I. It is news worth being in an actual news thread and not buried somewhere else, whether I think it is irrelevent or not.

The opposite of news, and (without wanting to put words in peoples' mouths) what I think those who don't want the news threads being clogged, is posts about "animal X turned 4 today" or "animal X got a snow day at the zoo". Items that very likely have no impact on anybody because they are just promotional pieces by the zoo. There is a significant difference between those sort of items and items about animals being bred or conservation efforts for endangered species.
 
Actually, when I noted the tamarin births in the main thread, I specifically said I thought they belonged there, and used them as a comparison with the two that didn't (lemur twins growing, chat with gorilla keeper).

The issue people had is that the news threads were becoming basically collections of every single thing the media published on a zoo. I would generally say births of anything endangered would belong in the main thread as a matter of course.

I really appreciate Zoofan15's curation of this thread, and would not dispute any of the other articles that have gone here rather than the main threads.
 
Thank you to both Chlidonias and Geoffrey for your comments. Personally I think it's good to have this thread for news we don't want clogging up the main threads but can appreciate my bias towards mammals (especially the larger ones) may have unfairly led to me relegating an article that was of interest to those more knowledgeable about bird species to this thread so I'm grateful for having that point of view explained to me.
 
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