New Guinea Exhibits

Ituri

Ituri

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Are there any zoos out there that have a specifically New Guinea exhibit area? It seems that the fauna from the world's largest tropical island always end up being lumped together in Australian or southeast Asian exhibits.
 
melbourne zoo had a purpose-built new guinea display for a couple of years before it was bulldozed to make way for a new orangutan exhibit.

it was however hardly a "zone" and consisted of a raised boardwalk with a mixed tree-kangaroo and echidna exhibit and neighbouring cassowary exhibit.

still it was very popular and lively exhibit. the echidnas and TK's mixed very well.

sadly australian zoos no longer have the remarkable collection of new guinean fauna we once had. w
 
Rare species conservation centre (kent, rscc) has a 'new guinea hall' however I think they display species here (birds) that dont belong to New guinea.
 
It wouldn't be hard to do here in Australia again...We share a lot of the same species of birds and Goodfellows tree kangaroos are pretty established. Striped Possum, red-legged pademelon and short-nosed echidna live in PNG as well as Australia.
 
I was thinking it would be an interesting display here in the states. Potential species list would be Goodfellow's or Matschies tree-roos, singing dogs, island flying-foxes, southern cassowary, palm cockatoo, crowned-pigeons, pied imperial pigeons, Raggianna bird-of-paradise, crocodile monitors, Boelen's pythons.... would be a facsinating exhibit in my opinion.
 
Toronto has their New Guinea species (Victorian Crowned Pigeon, Matschie's tree-roos) in with the rest of the Australasian collection. The exception to this are the New Guinea Singing dogs (used in demos) are kept in the children's section. If they ever decide to retire them from shows, I think it'd be nice if they could somehow bring them closer to the rest of the Australasian area.
 
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