Thats realy a pitty. At the beginning of the 2000s I saw the group at Cologne which at that time contained at least 6 animals ! A shame that it was not possible to maintain the species and hopefully Chleby will equal succesfull as Cologne has been in the past but the first young have already been born so lets hope !
This summer I heard a man at the zoo (a visitor, regular by the look of him) tell some people it was the only one in Europe. I was very tempted to correct him but didn’t have the courage to mention it on this occasion.
Yes, it's very sad that there are no douc langurs in Cologne. I first visited Cologne in 1980; in those days Cologne had a great collection of primates in the Lemur House: proboscis monkey, douc langur, rare saki monkeys and rare uakaris in addition to all the lemurs.
According to the annual brochure of zooparc de Beauval they will host douc langurs in their new tropical dome opening in february next year. https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/z ... e_2020.pdf
2011 Cologne recieved a small group of confitigated Black-breasted leaf turtles ( Geoemyda sprengleri ) and 2013 the species was put on display in the Aquarium. 2016 the zoo had their first breeding-result and also in the years afther the species has been bred. 2019 no less then 4 young hatched and 2 young are now also on display .
To start off the year, the zoo have shared progress photographs of the South American House refurbishment. Looks like some serious work, only the walls and towers seem to remain! Security Check Required
I visited Cologne today and despite the surprisingly large crowds it was a delightful visit. - In both the Aquarium and the Terrarium section the collection is becoming more unique every year, with a stronger focus on endangered species, especially SE Asia. - In the rainforest house both a Yellow-breasted fruit dove and a Spotted imperial pigeon have gone on show (both are only kept in 2 other zoos in Europe). With four fruit dove and 2 imperial pigeon species on show, there is quite some diversity, but still it is only a fraction of what they keep & breed behind the scenes... New for me in the Bird area were Lesser blue-eared starling (5th zoo in Europe), which have been kept for quite some months now - The Elephant shrew enclosure in the Hippodom has been converted to a nocturnal enclosure for Hausa genet. The Rufous elephant shrews are behind the scenes (where they are breeding, with 2 births in the past months). The Sun squirrel seems to be no longer at the zoo. - No construction has started yet on the planned Coquerel sifaka + Ring-tailed lemur enclosure, but there is a lot going on around the S-American house. - A second female Nile lechwe has arrived, so there are now 1.2 Nile lechwe in the former Bactrian red deer enclosure. Hog deer are already on the map in the Banteng enclosure, but they are not there (yet).
The Zoo has received a group of critically endangered Mangarahara cichlids (Ptychochromis insolitus) from Toronto Zoo last year and they have already started breeding behind the scenes, the first young have already been sent to Vienna and Stuttgart, Duisburg and Berlin will receive them soon too. The zoo is now in the process of emptying the 20.000 liter Lake Tanganyika tank (one of the 3 large tanks) and remodeling it into a Malagasy tank, which is part of their process on focusing more and more on endangered freshwater fish. Security Check Required
There is a small, 3-paragraph article about the rare Madagascan fish in the latest issue of Zoo Grapevine & International Zoo News, and in that typically packed magazine there are also 4 full pages on Burgers' Zoo courtesy of a rave review from a British zookeeper. That zoo in Arnhem is dear to the heart of @lintworm .
Two videos of the building works on the tigers enclosure have been posted on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=664058671079644 https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=646209689259697
Prompts the same questions, as Berlin. Is this current; if so, is Germany not on lock-down? - or is 'lock down' different in different countries? I guess along with financial help (or lack of it) that countries have varying approaches...?
I suspect the latter, as the "soft lock-down" in the Netherlands is certainly different from the "soft lock-down" in Belgium, let alone the stricter countries like Italy and Spain. I don't know the German situation though.
The 2019 annual report of the zoo is now online here (German only): Unternehmen The zoo received 1,346,956 visitors last year, which is a 10% increase over 2018. Some noteworthy mammal births in 2019 include a Banteng (the young bull born in 2018 had to be euthanized as no place was available in European zoos and was fed to the predators, the same happened to 2 young Onager males), European Otter, 2 Red Howler Monkeys (another one was born a month ago), Okapi, 2 Persian Leopards, 2 Geoffrey's Cats, 3 Northern Luzon Cloud Rats, 3 Bettongs, 6 Rufous Elephant Shrew (2 other young did not survive), Bonobo, 1 Musk Ox, 1 Ring-tailed Vontsira (another one was born in 2020), 1 Greater Bamboo Lemur (another one was born this month) New arrivals over the last year include Southern Three-banded Armadillo, Patagonian Mara, Nile Lechwe (first calf already born this year), 2 Lyle's Fruit Bats, 4 King Colobus. A male Hog Deer did arrive from TP Berlin, but was already injured on arrival and died shortly afterward. Blackbuck will now move into the Banteng enclosure as smaller species. The bird collection was extended once again from 1567 birds in 268 species the zoo kept 1682 birds in 289 species by the end of the year. Many of the Fruit Doves reproduced again this year. A small selection of other births (over 100 bird species, of which 55 Anseriforms, bred in 2019) includes 24 Inca Terns, African Openbill, Southern Bald Ibis, 8 Carmine Bee-eaters. New species include Coscoroba Swan, Red-headed Goose, S-African Shellduck, Cinnamon Ground Dove, Red Cardinal, Red-crested Turaco, 6 Solitary Tinamu, 2 Madagascar Blue Pigeon, 4 Madagascar Sacred Ibis, 3 Madagascar Pond Heron, 2 Crested Coua, Grey's Fruit Dove, Black-headed Duck and Bush Thick-knee. 1 King Bird-of-Paradise came from Walsrode, 2 King BoP, 3 Lesser BoP and 2 12-wired BoP were received from a confiscation in Austria. Additionally 8 amphibian, 19 fish species and 16 reptile species could be bred Not kept anymore are White-faced saki, Balabac Mousedeer, Red-shanked Douc (Kidney failure), Sun-squirrel among a few others. So overall a really successful year for the zoo collection wise.