Taronga Zoo Taronga and Western Plains in the news

i heard it you know lol along the grapeline, from people or staff at wagga uni, but im not sure of all details

but taronga has done it before, the new elephant exhibit is actually 1 square meter smaller than the old one, with 2.5 more elephnats. although they will have a new afcility soon.

now to get it clear thisis not me having a go at taronga, cause i am loving what they are doing, and also dont quote me on anything
 
What I like about Taronga's elephant enclosure is that it's not just on one level.
Most zoos elephant enclosures are reasonably flat ( boring ).
Taronga's has an upper level with a water moat/pool and, below it, a lower level with a waterfall from the upper level.

This, in my opinion, represents refreshing new thinking, (unlike when Taronga decided to expand their previous elephant yard some years ago and they undertook construction of concrete retaining walls and brought in a large quantity of fill just to keep the whole thing reasonably flat.)

It's probably both physically and mentally healthier for the animals not to be just kept on the flat.

While I know that elephants need a fair amount of walking for the health of their feet, I often think that with ANY species what counts is not how much area they have, but how "interesting" (from the animal's point of view) their enclosure is.
 
Ara said:
What I like about Taronga's elephant enclosure is that it's not just on one level. Most zoos elephant enclosures are reasonably flat ( boring )....
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i think the tier of the elephant exhibit at taronga has an aweful lot more to do with the steep incline the zoo is built on and not due to some radical new thinking in exhibit design to alleviate the "boredom" associated with flat exhibits.

whilst i agree that gradiation in terrain is both physically good for the animals and interesting for the visitors perspective you must remeber that its not always suitable. for elephants it can be health hazard, especially in small areas should fights break out. it my belief that large flat areas are equally important especially for a herd of elephants.....

Ara said:
While I know that elephants need a fair amount of walking for the health of their feet, I often think that with ANY species what counts is not how much area they have, but how "interesting" (from the animal's point of view) their enclosure is.
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hmmmm. starting to sound like a zoo director or someone who has been reading too many gerald durrell books there ara. i'm so tired of hearing this argument. its true that a small well designed enclosure is better than a large bad designed one. but thats no excuse for small enclosures. the argument is frequently thrown around as if having a large, well designed enclosure is an impossibility. its either a small enriching exhibit or a barren paddock.

space does = a degree of enrichment. so long as teh space you provide the animals with is suitable.

is a bear that wakes one morning and lifts the one log that furnishes its exhibit to find peanut butter smeared on its underside instead of the usual honey particuarly enriched? i would argue not as much as a bear that has 10 times the space and ten more potentially rewarding logs. eating food does keep an animal occupied and thats part of what enrichments about. but i believe that space offers much more enrichment opportunities as well and the pleasure of just being in a different space from time to time. i don't think the joy of appreciating different surrounds is just an inherently human trait. anyone who takes their dog (or elephant) to the beach can see that.

particuarly when it comes to elephants, my issue is not just the lack of enclosure space at city zoos thats put me off. the life for dubbos elephants might currently be not much more interesting than that of their taronga counterparts.

but the options are greater at dubbo, even if currently the zoos might not make the most of them.
 
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I always enjoy your posts on this forum patrick.
Whether we agree or disagree they are always interesting and always provide food for thought. (Sometimes uncomfortably so.)

You're right, of course - animals do need space AND variety of surroundings. The bear example is a good one. Many years ago when I was a kid, and Taronga had six bear enclosures (pits) each with a different species of bear, I used to think that the best way to house them would be to rotate them around the various pits on a daily basis, so that they were in a different pit each day. (A half-baked idea, I know; but my heart was in the right place.)

In any case, enrichment as undertaken currently in zoos is no substitute for natural variety and space.

As for that "Gerald Durrell" crack - I don't know whether to be flattered or indignant!
Durrell was a bit of a zealot - you gotta admire any private citizen who, against the odds, sets up a world-class zoo of his own. On the other hand his contention that zoos exist for animals not people was classic Durrell delusion.

I'm much more inclined to believe former Taronga director Peter Crowcroft, who maintained that zoos exist for people and that anyone who believed otherwise was having themselves on!
 
ha haaaH ;) gerald durrel was indeed an interesting character, his books at times could be laugh out loud funny and no doubt any zoolover would secretly wish they had a bunch of cages, porters and booze and a free license to go and catch themselves some okapi and colobus monkeys...

also , he made some very true statements about enclosure design. still nonetheless, he never seemed to realise that by purchasing that poor baby gorilla from and animal dealer it was indeed him who had unwittingly butchered its mother with a machete....

a product of his time, we'll call him that and be thankful or what he did do, which was become the biggest advocate of conservation breeding that i know of...

what worries me at the moment, is that we are supposed to be embarking on this new era of zoos, yet we are still avoiding some critical issues, one of those being space. i think our perceptions of how much space a zoo animal needs has become somewhat warped after seeing animals in mostly disgustingly inadequate enclosures most of our lives.

zoos are jazzing up exhibits and they have indeed gotten slightly larger as a general rule, but i think we sometimes still miss the mark.

in any event, its not like i'm screaming for acres apon acres of sapce and demanding a shutdown of city zoos. but overall i notice we often even skimp on space for creatures such as meerkats, which supprises me. its as if as the animal species shrinks, from elephant to meerkat, so too does the enclosures, so you end up with something comparable no matter what the species is. i think we do this without even thinking.
 
on the positive side at least zoos are starting to keep elephants in herds! its a start.
interestigly, the site of wild asia is one of the few pars of the zoo that actualy was flat-the 2 paddock system seems to be more of a design effect to give the illusion of space than a topographical consideration, although it effectively does create two smaller enclosures and a variety of enrichment opportunities one single big enclosure would lack.....in particular the steep bank which runs between the lower pool and upper paddock...
has anyone been to see the elephants lately? between train breakdowns, floods and now APEC i havent been to sydney for ages, and am waiting ona progress update.
and whilst were on the subject of elephants, does anyone know why the grove of elephant ears and grasses at the front of the elephant exhibit by the water was cemented over?
 
i see the elephants most weekends and they seem to be settling in really well.
they are playing and the keepers find heaps of 'work' for them to do which they really seem to enjoy

i think that the diffrent levels of the exhibit also help the elephants to have some time alone. whilst they are herd animals and prefer to be in groups is not unusuall to see one of them alone in the second smaller paddock just staying away from the others. whist they wait for gungs new home its probably a really good thing that they have this area where the girls or gung can escape from each other. i agree though that it probably wasnt 100% intentional and had to do with the slope of the zoo
 
thanks for sucha quick response torie. glad to hear theyre all doing well, in MARCH the keepers were trying out the two young girls with a whole heap of log moving exercises.
how is theexhibit holding up. has it really recoveredsince the june storms?
my only gripe about the exhibit, is, if its the case that its already looking kinda worn out (and some might say thats what you should expect from 5 elephants in this exhibit) is that Taronga did have ages to get this exhibit right in terms of substrate and establishing turf, although i reckon a sand yard probably would have been the best compromise from day one.
 
i agree the yard is looking pretty tired.
there is no grass at all and the ground doenst drain very quickly so in all the rain that were getting it a bit of a mud pit at times. the moat is also looking pretty gross, compared to its clear beautiful appearence before the elephants. Now is murky and cloudy but at least it shows there using it well!

i think that something other then grass may have been a good idea because the dirt that was under the grass isnt holiding up to the challange of elephants very well.
 
Isn't it funny the way all threads, sooner or later, turn to elephant discussions?
(Blame Zoo Boy and me for this one!)

Maybe this forum should be renamed elephantbeat.
 
i'm to blame here as well....

does the taronga moat/pool have live plants in it? melbournes is certainly never clear but in never looks "dirty" in my opinion. the elephants have a pool in all three yards but they only use the deep one. the others are always clear. despite the deep pools square shape, which doesn't seem as appealing at tarongas pool, the protected plants (behind a submerged concrete barrier) add a nice effect i think, making it look more natural though its a shame they never had luck with the water lillys....
 
the area that the elephants use doesnt have any plants in it but the side between the moat and the exhibit fence does have reeds growing on it that are out of the reach of the elephants.

i suppose your right in that the moat dosnt really look 'dirty' as such its just no where near as clean as it was pre elephants
 
yep. that was always gonna happen. you should have seen the pretty grassy hillocks mek kapah and bong su first inherited....

is it true there was a seal in tarongas pre-elephant exhibit at one stage?!!
 
patrick said:
is it true there was a seal in tarongas pre-elephant exhibit at one stage?!!
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YEp,
the seals didnt live in the exhibit but of the ones that are trained to ride in the back of a modified car, mainly the show seals, one was taked for a swim in the moat each day. so over the summer holidays when it was really hot the seals all got some time in the huge pool. it was cool to see it being used instead of left empty, the seals had a ball and so did the marine keepers who got to cool of in the pool!
 
i thought that during the wintery weather the moat might have cleared up a bit but obviously the eles are still using it frequently.
unfortunately, most of tarongas block buster exhibits come undone through simple design flaws. however, im quite sure taronga isnt alone here insofar that despite millions of dollars being spent things never turn out quite right; mistakes that even zoobeaters can see coming.
obviously, the live animal element is an uncertain consideration...when dealing with animals things can always go wrong, ie alligators getting loose in the Amazonia display (which started with a gravel path which was later ripped up and left me wondering why the hell didnt they do that in the first place)? or dora' feet problems out at dubbo because of incorrect substrate....or the last minute landscaping of the gorilla rainforest which pretty soon looked backyard blitzed pre reno as the gorillas sauntered through pulling the plants out roots and all.
but you'd think the planners behind wild asia wouldnt have cocked up the water filter system in the moats.....in less than a year the exhibit has, not suprisingly, went from hamilton island'esque to a giant mud pool. does anyone else think the zoo should have landscaped the exhibit a little bit more functionally? i probably would never have even bothered with grass in the first place, or live palms. instead, stacks of deadfall timber, upright dead trees planted and a sand base throughout....guess it mightnt have swayed the judges quite as easily as a grassy grove and turquoise moat but i can see expensive elephant proof changes coming to fix it all up
 
oh you know, its all trial and error. did the zoo ever expect that the moat would stay clean? maybe not. should they have pre muddied the moat befor e the elephants arrived just to avoid public dissapointment? is it really a big deal? (seriously) does it look that bad?

how are the live palms holding up? melbourne had to remove one very large tree soon after their exhibit opened but i don't think it had anything to with elephant damage, moreso, at a guess, too much root-loss during construction of the neighbouring pool.

melbourne has few live trees in their exhibits, but those that they do have a doing well. fortunately the entire area is surrounded by live trees, so teh animals have no issues with lack of shade etc..

the substrate at melbourne is also largely sandy. i still imagine it turns pretty muddy in teh rain however. but unfortunately it never rains these days.....
 
I personally prefer the moat the way it is now because it proves that the elephants are using it andd are making the most of the space that they have. The most in it scurrent size and depth wasnt even factered in in the original plans and the very early drafts just had a small pool. So the fact that the moat is being used just proves to the planners that its inclusion was a good idea.

the palm trees are doing alright, they still have some leaves but becasue the grass has all come up and the ground is being a bit degraded through all the recent rain the roots of the trees have started to show so maybe their days are numbered before some elephant decides to rub that little bit too hard :p

I have some very recient photos of the top and main veiwing paddock i can upload if anyone wonts but their not the best quality
 
ok i just uploaded them (i think!) i didnt have any of the moat but you can see the grass has all been ripped up and the beginings of the roots around the trees showing
 
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