Saarbrucken Zoo

Saarbrucken Zoo
03-01-2009

I would be interested to hear of any news from this strange zoo.

It is a place I have visited on many occasions in the past, but not for about three years.

For those who don't know it, it is the most un German of German zoos - shabby, scruffy, under-resourced. It does have a very good colection, though, with groups of drills and mandrills, some choice madagascan species, kiwi, gorilla and others. It also has a great site, in my opinion: hilly, wooded, on the edge of town. Saarbrucken is a great city, too, so it should be a good zoo - but it isn't! In some ways it reminds me of the way heidelberg was before Klaus Wunnemann took over there, about ten years ago. The fact that he has turned that zoo around gives hope for a place like Saarbrucken - although it does have an awfully long way to go. i'd say that it had about three good exhibits - gibbons, crab-eating macaques, corsac foxes. the rest ranged from the mediocre to the fairly awful.

It is extraordinary that the zoo doesn't even have a web site. I hear that they have a new guidebook; does anyone have this? Is it is a proper publication or just a leaflet?

Any news would be much appreciated!

03-01-2009

They do have a nice guidebook published in 2007, its a real guidebook with around 100 pages and a jaguar on the cover. Its quite expensive, 8 euros....You forgot in your list of good exhibits the jaguar exhibit, its quite good and the formely elephant exhibit, which is now used for brazzilan tapirs. They also have agood red river hogs exhibit, whcih is new, it was included in 2008.

If I Have finshed to post the zoo berlin pics, I will post some picture sof saarbrücken zoo,which is not really a good zoo, but there are some resons for that.

05-01-2009

What do you think those reasons are?

Is the erstwhile director to blame, do you think?

The tapir enclosure is indeed okay - but there's an awful lot of rather ugly artificial rock work. The jaguars? Again, not bad - but nothing special, i don't think.