23 July, 2023
Gembira Loka Zoo
A very short visit as part of my two-days visit to Yogyakarta. I had to travel from Jakarta to Yogyakarta and back with a car, which takes almost 10 hours if there's no heavy traffic. It's almost 11.30 AM by the time I exited the zoo, so I had to start my trip back to Jakarta to atleast before 2 AM to avoid driving through midnight.
My visit to Yogya was also not really for vacation, I almost cancelled my trip to Gembira Loka until I finally managed to find and book a boarding room before 9 AM.
I went to only like a handful of exhibits, there's definitely a number of great one, but most are honestly very outdated. Here's those exhibits and my personal view of those.
Primate Zone:
Not really a full tour as I only went to only several exhibits near the zone's old entrance. The primate exhibits are some old school primate aviaries, even all of the newer one from I can see. There's also three very crammed rectangular aviaries that are more suitable for smaller passerine birds, that infuriatingly have an adult agile gibbon. Another sad sights include Asian palm civet and Malayan civet. Though I'm not a huge fan of primate aviaries, atleast the larger aviaries is still tall enough for the gibbons to move around.
There's also a new walkthrough aviary that barely have any foliage aside from several perching platfroms. Not only that and also the rather small size, it also have the most messy collection choice inside. From green iguanas, African spurred tortoises, Sunda teals, peafowls, mute swans, golden pheasants, and even a bunch of hooded butcherbirds and a trio wreathed hornbills. I guess they were supposed to be temporary inhabitants, as this was planned to house ring-tailed lemurs in the future. I honestly really hope that's the case, the similar aviary at Bali Zoo is bad enough.
Aquarium:
I guess the new capybara enclosure is part of the aquarium zone, right? I definitely not a fan of the design, even if it's for a pair of young capybaras. Eventually they'll get larger and need to be moved elsewhere. The "mega tank" isn't even that "mega". It was very dark, you can barely saw anything until you squint hard enought or when the fish swim closer to the glass. There's also a very huge pirarucu that I barely even notice due to the lighting. The tank also have a upper view for some reason, which was utterly useless atleast for the visitors since you can barely see things and also due to the small size of the "mega" tank.
The main aquarium building is pretty troubling in my opinion. It's a bunch of small tanks with most of their inhabitants having outgrown their tank. Not to mention, it even have a colony of GloFish™ in there! And I thought SeaWorld Ancol was bad.
I really wanted to see the Zoo's white-edged whipray, as it was in my mind the aquarium's center piece. I was disappointed that the ray had apparently been phased out. The tank that supposedly housed the ray now have tinfoil barbs and a pair of fahaka puffer. But only a short while later, I was blasted with a very surprising addition to the aquarium, a
Chinese giant salamander!!! Let's say that I'm glad that they for some reason hadn't make any news about this despite the reputation this species has ;-)
Still, I don't like how they displayed the salamander. The tank is quite small for it to move around freely. I prefer the salamander to have it's own "special exhibit" in a sense, rather than treated as another aquatic species in a rather unworthy Aquarium.
Zona Cakar (Scratch Zone):
Another exhibit that I hasn't fully toured, even skipping the zoo's fishing cat and overall the cat row. Still, I managed to visit the zone's and also one of the zoo's center piece, the new Sumatran tiger exhibit. The closest I could compare it to is with Taronga's tiger exhibit. It have two indoor glass viewing where we can see the tigers up close without seriously bothering them. The moat in the outdoor viewing have a beautiful waterfall, coupled with the lush vegetation just across it. There are two otter exhibits (Indoor and outdoor), which I'm not sure if they are connected or not. The outdoor exhibit is pretty decent, the otter's smell though got me nostalgic for some reason. The indoor exhibit wasn't that bad, not a fan of the choice of the plain white wall.
Another interesting addition is the Javan leopard exhibit. Very large and had a lot of climbing platforms for the leopards. Thought, I'm not a fan of the use of wires instead of glass for viewing, making it a bit harder to see the leopards in the rightfully large exhibit. It also had minimal foliage for the shy leopards aside from at the back, which is a huge minus.
Miscellaneous:
There's several enclosures scattered around the park that aren't assigned to the specific zones. At the western part of the entrance, there's a rather ugly, but still large enough aviaries for Prevost's squirrel and cream-colored giant squirrels. They have these wired tunnels that lead to a square space in front of the exhibits for the visitors to see the squirrels feed on some fruits for up close.
Just behind and also beneath it, there are two increadibly old and dirty enclosures with South American coatis and Sunda porcupines. The coati enclosure has like a dozen of them crammed in that enclosure, no idea they had a breeding success with this species. This is what the now coati exhibit when they still had sun bears, the moat is dry now (Thank god they were moved lol) -
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/sun-bear-enclosure.429165/#media
The Sumatran elephant enclosures is pretty much like every other elephant enclosures in all other city zoos, plain but large. Still, atleast they have much more space to moved around and also natural flooring instead of cement. Near that, there's two enclosures with a island in the middle of each exhibits. Despite the relatively small size of the enclosures, the first one have a mother and child Bornean orangutan duo, while the second one have a adult chimpanzee. It was probably one of the oldest inhabitants of the zoo.
Conclusion
I had a mixed view of Gembira Loka. On a positive note, I was genuinely surprised by the zoo's layout. I was expecting a messy and unconnected layout of Ragunan as both were old city zoos, I was amazed that not only the zoo's layout was somewhat modern, the setting and surrounding of the zoo is very great despite being in the middle of a city. Not to mention that the map is actually very helpful and accurate, compared to other Indonesian zoo's.
They also somewhat committed to actually do several upgrades, as Zona Cakar is now on one my Top 10 exhibits in Indonesian zoos and aquarium. Thought aside from that, the other "upgrades" were just not great. There's still so many remnants of the zoo's older exhibits that are now very unfeasible, I'm very pessimistic that they'll do any actual revitalization of those.
There were a lack of staffs in some of the most "vulnerable" exhibit I'd say, especially since impressionable children are frequent in Gembira Loka and Indonesian zoo's overall. The most glaring example in the future lemur walkthrough aviary. Before I entered the aviary, I guess someone's child either forgot their balloon or deliberately gave it to a female wreathed hornbill for "entertainment", the child and their family had left when I first saw the balloon. The hornbill was "playing" around with the balloon until it popped, which definitely shocked most of the aviary's inhabitant especially that hornbill. What followed is a anxious struggle to prevent the same hornbill from literally swallowing and devouring the deflated balloon. It was the closest time that I have ever been to an adult hornbill, I guess I was lucky that the hornbill was quite docile. I found the opportunity to take the deflated balloon as the hornbill was perching in one of circular platform, there was hole in the middle where part of the balloon was peeking in, which I managed to take from the unsespecting hornbill.
Again, despite all that, no guard at all were present inside or atleast around the aviary to prevent this and similar situation. But, I also want to say what the hell was the child's parents doing during that aside from taking selfies and vlogs for their Instagram post? It really prove my point that most of the stupid stuffs and some controversy in Indonesian zoos and also pet keeping in general is the result of bad parenting, as well as lack of proper education and others.
Suggestion
Definitely need to demolish the older, unfeasible enclosures in the zoo and maybe repurpoused it into something else. I can see the coati and porcupine exhibit to be demolished and turned into a large, connected pool. They can moved the pirarucu and other larger fish into the pond.
For the Primate Zone, I'd say follow the Taman Safari model with their Primate Centre. They can build a tall, but also natural enclosures for the leaf-eating monkeys and gibbons with glass viewing. The smaller aviaries can be demolished and turned into a glassed, planted enclosures displaying slow lorises and tarsiers. They can maybe build another primate complex speficically for tamarins and marmosets.
For the orangutan and chimpanzee enclosures, they should renovate it to be much bigger, similar to the enclosures at Taman Safari Bogor's Primate Centre. They also should definitely get more orangutans and chimpanzees as they were somewhat alone in those exhibits, probably due to the lack of enclosure space.
The "mega" tank, after the fishes were moved, should be remodelled with better lighting and natural decoration. Then, the Chinese giant salamander should be moved in to the much better and appropriate enclosure. For the capybara enclosure, as they grow older and larger, it should housed turtles or maybe a dwarf caiman. Aside from that, I'd say it need more foliage.
For the Aquarium it self, moved out all the larger fish in there and definitely get rid of all the GloFish™. Instead, I can see all the +15 tanks being repurpoused into a thematic tanks, representing various rivers and lakes in Indonesia and the world with smaller aquascape fish (Definitely not the man-made morphs one). Since the middle of the Aquarium building was empty, they should get a larger tank where they can display their Asian arowana, tinfoil barbs, bala sharks, clown loach, and, if they could, the white-edged whipray.
The Carnivore Zone (Zona Cakar) is good enough in my eyes aside from several negatives. The wall in the indoor otter enclosure should be repainted/remodelled into a more natural, Rocky wall. Aside from that, they should add glass viewing to the Javan leopard enclosure.
Score
- Animal exhibits: 6/10
- Animal welfare: 7/10
- Zoo's setting: 10/10
- Species variety: 7/10
- Man-made morphs: Handful
Species highlight
- Chimpanzee
- Agile gibbon
- Sumatran tiger
- Javan leopard
- South American coati
- Malayan civet
- Cream-colored giant squirrel
- Prevost's squirrel
- Wreathed hornbill
- Hooded butcherbird
- Chinese giant salamander
- Pirarucu
- Fahaka puffer
