What are the reasons you want or not want to find/have a zoo?

[LARTIS]

Sorry if such a thread already exists, but I could realy find any that I felt was the right one to ask the following questions.

Several zoochaters have voiced interest in finding or at least having or maybe leading a zoo, and tho I can already imagine the main reasons, I wanted to ask specificaly, what elements would intrigue them the most. Is it that the position of being in charge allowed them to decide what species get kept and the general design of the park? Maybe the scientific aspect? Does the desire to have an institution near the place one grew up in have any significant role? What work are you specificaly interested in and what if possible would you source out?

Are any of you specificaly interested in creating a specialized park, or not bigger than a certain size?

What about the model of starting with domestic animals and gradualy converting into a more traditional concept of a zoo?

Are more interested in keeping certain animals because of your personal interest or particularly for the public?

What role does botany play in your plans?

But also for all those that specificaly would neither want to find nor have a zoo?

Are there other members like me that over and over made the decision not to go for such a plan, yet falling too easily back into the thought that under the right circumstances, one might actualy do find a zoo?

Generaly to all members, what was your personal history in relation to the idea of finding a zoo?
Did you want to have a park of yourself but abandon the plan, or maybe the other way around?

 

[Nikola Chavkoski]

I don't want to tell all about my plans for a zoo, because most of them are yet to be realized. But I can list these things:

- I have a desire to own a zoo since I was child. I love wild animals, since I know for myself. Thus I studied veterinary medicine.

- I work abroad, I am not rich, but I managed to buy some land, around 8,100 m2 till now, for a zoo planing, and I managed to invest not big amounts of money for few real estate projects, that can yeld more funds in the next decade.

- I want to go with an official architectonic plan this spring, in order to get a construction permit for complete complex for husbandry of wild captive animals, initially only for enclosures for one species of big cat (preferably tiger, but possibly lion or leopard/jaguar), some medium-sized nonhuman primates (preferably siamangs or gibbons), and enclosure for wallabies or kangaroos and for some big parrot (like hyacinth macaws).

- I put in the middleground regarding the choice of the species which is based on eassines of obtainability, their attractiviness to the general public, needed level of knowledge/experience to keep them, my personal preferences and the costs for construction for suitable enclosures for them.

- I always wanted to have a zoo near my birth town of Prilep in North Macedonia (or whithin Prilep administrative area, which is biggest by surface in North Macedonia, stretching around 40km from northernmost to the southernmost point) and where I have lived regularly in my first 28 years of my life. I don't like to have zoo in any other place; Perhaps maybe only Northern Greece is exception, since it lacks a real zoo, it is close to my origin country, and if possible in distant future.

- But what is facilitating in my case, is that 'Western money' I earn, I invest in a middle-income country, where price for land and the construction costs are lower than in Western developed countries themselves.

-Can you tell us your age, and I wish you luck with your future undertakings for a zoo.