Wellington Zoo wellington zoo furore

crowd control

therein lies the problem. taronga is already the regions busiest zoo, and as there are realy no official figures about attendance in this financial period (during which the elephants arived) youll just have to go off my guesstimate which is that taronga is significantly busier no than ever before...
so walking the elephants along the boulevards packed with people mightnt be such a good option. walking two elephants around a quieter zoo like Auckland would be much easier than walking 5 elephants, including a stroppy bull around a zoo thats packed to the rafter.
i think a far better alternative would be to offer zoo encounters with the animals, which is on the cards. currently, visitors to taronga can pay an additional $16.95, which covers up to 4 people, and have encounters with giraffes and koalas. thats in addition to the behind-the-scenes tours offered to zoo friends, etc.
with taronga's commercial minded management i would say that it wont be long before a similar scheme for the eles is launched. australia zoo offers a feeding the elephants program and its really popular, apparently.
another alternative, and maybe a safer one, would be to maybe re-model the aldabran tortoise exhibit into an ampitheatre type arrangement where the elephants could come out of their exhibit and do presentations for a seated public. just an idea?
 
the other day my mother returned from the zoo very excited because after a long conversation with a keeper about how much she loved the elephants she was invited into the barn, much to the jealousy of all the other visitors, to give dokoon some apples and a hug!
 
lol so its whole-family thing with you ;)
its those kinds of encounters the zoo neeeds more of, spontatnous, intimate and quite moving for little children.
at the very least those who are on the encounters should have to cough up a donation for an in-situ project, or that should be factored into the price.
 
a family thing? yeah pretty much. ;)
last time i visited the zoo (always on a quiet weekday to reward myself if i worked all weekend or pulled a late-nighter) a keeper arriving in the "elephant research station" wandered over to me and told me to hold out my hand. when i did he placed a baby elongate tortoise in my palm whilst he continued to put the rest of its siblings into an enclosure.

like you said glyn, a spontaneous, varied sort of encounter is the sort of thing that makes a your day on a trip to the zoo. the simple act of holding a tortoise can be your favorite memeory and you forget all about viewing the lions.

i think melbourne zoo are doing a good job of introducing more of this sort of thing. there is a public handwashing station built into the new orangutan exhibit - the sign above indicates the idea is for kids/visitors to have some sort of contact with the orangs eventually?

i think feeding of the elephants and giraffes is something melbourne could definately get more actively involved in. though personally i'll never pay extra. i hate paying EXTRA for anything.

werribee introduced giraffe feeding - for a fee! what a waste, as great as werribee is, its only interesting for about 2 hours and then you wanna go home, i kinda think its cheap to provide just two hrs of entertainment and then charge extra for something that other zoos provide for free..
 
I think taronga could charge people to go up the lookout thing that goes over the elephant enclosure. It would need to be closely monitored so that no one drops anything down on to the elephants. The volunteers could run it and charge people a few dollars.
 
It was built as a last minute "special request" for VIP visitors. It's actually a crap view from up there, unless you like looking down on elephants' backs. I'm hoping it eventually gets pulled out of there, but some how, I doubt it.

You can of course jump on the cable car, which gives much the same view, and do a round trip ;)
 
patrick said:
i think melbourne zoo are doing a good job of introducing more of this sort of thing. there is a public handwashing station built into the new orangutan exhibit - the sign above indicates the idea is for kids/visitors to have some sort of contact with the orangs eventually?
Click to expand...

That's interesting. Singapore used to allow full contact with orangs, allowing them to even sit on visitors' laps, or hug them. About 2, 3 years back all physical contact was ceased - first as a safety precaution, second to prevent transmission of disease. Orangs and humans share many many diseases, so allowing any kind of contact would have to be carried out carefully (such as monitoring visitors/apes for any sign of illness). Now not even petting of orangs is allowed.
 
letter and response to/from city councillor

Dear Nigel
Thanks for the info. The email was also sent to
Denise Church (chair)
and myself. The trustees all take animal welfare
very seriously and
will investigate the allegations. I do appreciate
you letting me know.
Regards.

At 12:01 p.m. 21/03/2007, you wrote:
> Hello Celia ,
>
> As you may recall , I am supportive of
>Wellington retaining and upgrading its zoo .
> I thank you for all your unseen efforts in
>securing the $$s to upgrade this facility .
>
> I belong to an internet forum group called
>Zoobeat Forum . This is usually pro zoo and
>conservation .
> However there was a recent press release ( I
>missed it ) that has allegations of attacks on
>staff by cheetahs , cruelty to cheetahs by
animal
>trainer , and zoo management gagging staff from
>speaking about the incident .
>
> These allegations have been made by an animal
>advocacy group SAFE .
> I say that these are allegations , as I do not
>always agree with what this group believes .
> However ; if these allegations are true , I am
>disappointed with the actions ( or lack of ) by
>zoo management and staff
> if these allegations are false , it could
cause
>major damage for the reputation of the zoo .
> But I would like to know the TRUTH
>
> SAFE has written to Stephen butcher in MAF
about
>this incident .
>
> As you are the councillor for the Zoo , I felt
>it
> is important to inform you -- if you already
>know about it , it is now already out in the
open
>further beyond what the zoo management would
wish
>it to be .
> I am happy to fax you the press release and
>letter if you wish -- I just need your fax
>number
>
> Yours sincerely ,
 
response from Wellington Zoo

Dear Nigel

Thank you for your email and for sharing your concerns with us. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner, last week we were offsite at the Australasian Zoo industry conference. Wellington Zoo takes responsibility for health and safety and animal welfare very seriously. We ensure our animals are treated with the utmost regard for their welfare and care . We are signatories to the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria's (ARAZPA) Code of Practice and Code of Ethics. We also comply fully with the Animal Welfare Act regulated by MAF.

The incident you have referred to was an out of the ordinary occurence and an investigation was conducted. I am not at liberty to discuss details in order to protect the privacy of those staff members involved. As for 'gagging' staff members, all members of Zoo staff sign a code of conduct when they join the Zoo, and part of this code of conduct is that only appropriate media trained staff members will speak to the media. This is standard practice in most large organisations and zoos.

Our encounters are governed by strict health and safety protocols, all of which were reviewed at the time this incident took place. The scenario of a public encounter with the cheetahs, red pandas or any of our other contact animals is a completely different scenario to what occurred during the incident you have raised . To date we have held over 500 public encounters with absolutely no problems.

The motivation for our close encounter programme relates to the Zoo's goal of creating a place where conservation learning occurs. The Close Encounters programme aims to use the animals' natural behaviours to bring people face-to-face with some of the most fascinating co-inhabitants of our planet and the issues they face in the wild. Educational research shows that these kinds of experiences have high impact and create durable learning and action . Our aim is to forge strong connections between the animals and those who have contact with them. The feedback we have from people who have experienced these encounters is very positive with many acknowledging the power of the experience to increase their understanding of cheetahs and conservation.

In a world where natural habitat continues to be destroyed, people are living in more urbanised societies which are disconnected from nature and animals continue to be poached for their body parts, the numbers of many of the Zoo's species have declined to such an extent in the wild that many are in danger of disappearing. We believe that we have an extremely important part to play in conservation to ensure the survival of these species: the animals at Wellington Zoo act as ambassadors for their wild cousins.

Thanks again for taking the time to write to us.

Kind regards
Amy

As could be expected , very little was actually answered . But this is the official response from the zoo when I raised the issues with them .
 
pollie talk. i hate it.

nigel, maybe you should follow up with this straight question - one of your cheetah recently turned on a member of your staff in an unprovoked attack. what measures have been taken to assure that this particular animal will never again attack another person, particuarly a member of the public? a cheetah can cause significant injury to a person, with even greater risk to a child. is the possibilty of this happening again a concern for the zoo?
 
pollie talk. i hate it. in australia this kind of talk is usually accompanied by changing a two syllable word into one and vise-versa. for example:

"what is known about the police"

would be pronounced

"what is no-wun about the pleece"

ever noticed it before? watch lateline, they all do it - it drives me mad!!!

anyhow, back on topic...

nigel, maybe you should follow up with this straight question - one of your cheetah recently turned on a member of your staff in an unprovoked attack. what measures have been taken to assure that this particular animal will never again attack another person, particuarly a member of the public? a cheetah can cause significant injury to a person, with even greater risk to a child. is the possibilty of this happening again a concern for the zoo?
 
letter to/from the zoo

I didnt like the response any more than you lot do , either , but I posted it for the benefit of the forum .
I have responded with that exact question posed to them , and told them that some of us in the forum actually work in a zoo ( we are not just a bunch of amateurs ) and have expressed concern .
If/when I get another response , I will post it for the benefit of all to see .
 
I just read this whole thread now, and I'm not going to get into the debate about what's right or wrong (coz I think it was stupid for the zoo to be taking cheetahs to schools anyway!) but I just wanted to point out that SAFE stands for Save Animals From Exploitation (not Extinction). They are what I kindly refer to as a nutjob organisation. They are opposed to ALL forms of animal 'exploitation', including zoos, owning pets, farming, etc.
 
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