Sydney Zoo $36 million zoo with roaming African animals planned for Blacktown

Wow, boy am I impressed with Wikipedia. The accuracy on that website is tip top. It also said that the average weight of a leopard was 70-90 tons last month.

 

Don't blame Wikipedia - overall it is very accurate and is an amazing project. However idiots do go on and add stupid things, and these can hang around on less important pages for some time. The good thing is you can go in and directly correct errors you see. In fact Wikipedia want you to do that and rely on it.

 

I am a great fan of Wikipedia. I will change the page.

 

Chlidonias is your name a genus of terns?
Was it changed back? Oh ok I will change it again and fingers crossed there will be no more stupidity.

 

Any more specific date for opening?

 

I doubt they know themselves (and if they did, they wouldn’t tell us). Like @Chlidonias said, the date has already been pushed back from late 2018; to early 2019; to mid 2019; to late 2019.

 

'Managing director Jake Burgess said the attraction was now “90 per cent complete”, with recruitment for up to 250 jobs now underway.'

'“We are not at a point yet where we can announce our official opening date, but we are getting closer,” he said.'

We’re for Sydney | Daily Telegraph

 

I would still like to know where they are sourcing their Asian elephants. I have asked the zoo direct. LOL. They thanked me for my interest.

 

I don’t believe anyone on here has gotten an answer out of them on what individuals they’ll be importing (of any species), so all we can do is speculate on the most likely options based on the knowledge we have.

I believe the most likely scenario is that they’ll receive the two adolescent bulls from Taronga Western Plains Zoo (Luk Chai and Pathi Harn). New holders usually receive bachelor groups or non breeding animals, and it’ll free up space at their current zoo. Given that there are still founder males (Putra Mas and Gung) that can still be bred from, neither Luk Chai or Pathi Harn will be required for breeding in the immediate or near future and are therefore surplus to the breeding programme for the time being.

 

But will Taronga be willing to give them two of their elephants? The two institutions now have a quite obvious rivalry and are therefore not likely to put aside their contrasting views to fund a zoo that could potentially make them lose money.

 

Tbh sending their two surplus adolescent bulls to Sydney Zoo would be a smart move by Taronga Zoo:

A) It frees up space to breed more elephants at Taronga. Baby elephants = more visitors.

B) Sydney Zoo will hold two non breeding elephants that are no greater attraction than any other elephant in Australia. If they source their elephants from elsewhere, they could end with breeding elephants, which would then put them in competition with Taronga.

 

That is true I didn't think of the breeding element.

I've just thought about the other advantages for Taronga and here's another one:

If Taronga give them the elephants, to the general public it seems as if Taronga is overcoming the rivalry and being the more mature of the two (although tbh would the general public be aware of the transfer?)

 

The general public wouldn’t even be aware they are separate organisations, much less that they’re not getting along, much less that they might or might not exchange elephants.

 

While it’s absolutely a chance for Taronga Zoo to ‘be the bigger person’; it goes beyond that even, in the sense that a chance to offload two surplus bulls (with surplus being the operative word) is a great opportunity for Taronga Zoo. To turn it down (if offered) would be ‘cutting off their nose to spite their face’ so to speak.

 

Google maps has updated the mapping of the Sydney Zoo and is showing a fairly recent photo of the site from early on this year. You can make out most of the exhibits and buildings from it.

This is an overview of the site, although I have cropped out much of the parking on the southern side. Measuring the area of the zoo as we see it, minus the parking lots it comes out to just over 22 acres or 8.9 hectares (that includes the retention ponds in the NW corner). Below I have listed some individual exhibit sizes. I measured all of this using the google maps area calculator feature.

Notable Exhibit Sizes:

• Elephants (1.56 acres/6300 sq meters)
• Gorilla (.23 acres/930 sq meters)
• Chimpanzee (.22 acres /901 sq meters)
• Rhino (.52 acres /2104 sq meters)
• Giraffe/Ostrich/Zebra (.94 acres /3804 sq meters)

 

This place really is going to be at most a two-hour visit for most of us.