Zoo Liberec Liberec zoo news

20 specie? Whoa? I knew about some sort of refurbishment, but my impression was like two or three small tanks, this sounds like something quite bigger (although my impression from the text is, that this number is meant for all new exhibist in there, including cichlid tank, but it is still bigger change than I imagined...)
Topic also mentions post-poning of (re-) opening of monkey house.

 

The zoo mentioned on FB it moved its Bonelli's eagles backstage. The empty raptor cages got new inhabitants - bald eagles and Greater spotted eagles, both species kept for some time off-show and now finally visible to visitors. Bald eagles are dime a dozen, but Greater spotted eagles are very rarely kept in zoos or by falconers.

Zoo Liberec, příspěvková organizace

 

Their tropical house has been re-opened after repairs. New on show are two frog species: yellow-banded poison dart frog and dyeing poison dart frog.

The monkey house is still closed due to modernisation.

Great white pelicans have at least 6 small chicks.

 

Winter storm went over the zoo yesterday and toppled several mature trees. The zoo is closed for today (and probably also tommorow) to clean the areal and start repairs.

Unfortunately, one female Przewalski horse foal got spooked by a falling tree in their enclosure, fell and broke its knee. It had to be euthanized.

 

On the 23rd of February a female Maneless zebra (Equus quagga borensis) was born.

Source:
Instagram of Zoo Liberec (01/03/2023)

 

Plain viscachas have bred at the end of March - 3 youngsters from 2 females are on show for visitors.

Link

 

2.2 Snow Leopard (parents + 2 cubs) will arrive from Zurich in the next couple of weeks. They will stay whilst the enclosure at Zurich is rebuilt. Once it's ready (expected in 2025) the adult pair will be sent back. The cubs will move elsewhere in line with EEP recommendations once they reach maturity

 

Renovation of giraffe house has been pushed into future and should start only sometime this winter.

Meanwhile the zoo wants to keep their giraffe herd the smallest possible so to make their transport to other zoos and later their return smooth (and cheap). At the beginning of this year, the herd consisted just of an old breeding male, older breeding female and their last female calf. In late March, the 16-years old breeding female died unexpectedly. That left her 9-months old calf alone just with her father. The zoo deemed this situation to be unsustainable for the calf and so they asked for a new "aunt" for her. Dvur Kralove now sent a 9-years old cow Obioma on loan. She will spend time in Liberec till her transport back to Dvur in late autumn. She is allowed to get pregnant with Liberec bull - their pedigrees where examined and they are deemed to be valuable pairing for the EEP.

Source

 

I didn't see any viscachas on my visit last month, nor did I notice any signage. Does anyone know where they are supposed to be kept? Same question for the lowland paca.

So I did my first visit to the Liberec Zoo last month. From all the zoos I have now visited in the Czech Republic, it ranks at the bottom as my least favorite. (I've also been to Prague, Pilsen, Dvur, Jihlava, Zlin, Ostrava, Brno, Usti, Zajedz and Decin)

The elephant enclosure is bad, keeping only a single female. There's a reason she's kept alone, but that doesn't excuse the concrete disaster that's her enclosure.

The enclosure for the tigers is bad, the enclosures for snow leopards are worse, and the enclosure for Chinese leopards is even worse than both of them. The main lion enclosure isn't good either, but it's decent, but the secondary enclosure is also bad.

The monkeys aren't doing much better. The baboons are kept in a old-fashioned cage, the mangabeys are kept in a concrete/glass enclosure that's way too low and offers them very little (I can't believe it used to house orangutans!). The macaques and diana monkeys are also in cages, but the monkey house is being refurbished so their living conditions will likely improve when that's all done.
The chimpanzee enclosure is somewhat better, but still not great.

It isn't all bad. There's a few things I liked about the zoo. Some of the hoofed animals, like the nyala, vicuna, Visayan deer, ibex and markhor, have pretty good (though simple) enclosures.
The margay enclosure seemed pretty recent and is quite alright, at least better than Jihlava or Decin's enclosures for the species.
The aviaries for raptors are done pretty well, and so are the owl enclosures near the chimpanzees.
I also quite liked their Tropical House. The terraria are really well done. The aviaries for macawas and hornbills are decent although not all of them have outdoor enclosures.

Some things I noticed;
* No more gray short-tailed opossum on display (tho they are still signed). It was a huge bummer as I also missed out on them in Brno in 2018 and in Plzen (behind the scens) only 2 days earlier.
* The (former?) black lemur island was unoccupied. Not sure why and if the species is gone from the collection or if it's temporary.
* A new enclosure is being constructed between the reindeer and education centre. No info was to be found about it though.
* Fiji banded iguana is apparently a new species as it wasn't yet on Zootierliste.
* The sea lion enclosure was empty, and has been for a while apparently.

For those who interested, I updated ZTL as good as I could after this visit. I will soon add a few photo's to the gallery as well.

 

Out of interest, and conscious of not wanting to derail the thread completely, but would you have a ranking of the Czech zoos you did visit (the listed ones I guess)? Would be quite interesting to see how they compare in your opinion.

 

Viscachas live near baboons and meerkats.

Tigers are being phased-out. The whole house will belong only to lions.

Construction near reindeers is for keas.

The zoo changed owners last year. Instead of municipality, that is broke and couldnt afford any investments into its zoo for 2 decades, it now belongs to regional government that promised to upgrade the zoo, in small steps over next years. That should solve the worst exhibits.

 

Oof, difficult to say. A lot of them have both good and bad qualities. I overall really like Jihlava for example, but their cat house is terrible. If I had to rank them right now
(note that it's been 5 years since I visited Brno, Zlin and Ostrava so they're not as fresh in my memory as the others)

1. Prague. Easy. Best zoo ever.
2. Pilsen. I might be somewhat overrating this zoo because of their collection. Not all of their enclosures are good. Madagascar house for example is great for species, but is pretty subpar space-wise. But with so many pavillions and a focus on smaller, lesser known species, it has to rank high.
3. Dvur Kralove. Not much bad things to say except I don't really understand their 'rotation' policy. Also in the low season there's a lot of species off display. I might rank Dvur #2 if I'd only consider the high season, which doesn't start until May which is quite late.
4. Zlin. Zlin offers a lot of great stuff. Nice enclosures, interesting species, great tropical house. Great gelada enclosure, some nice aviaries.
Good focus on south-American species which is a plus. Not really any bad enclosures.

Honestly all of these are great zoos in my opinion. Now let's get to the good but not great zoos.

5. Jihlava. I like Jihlava, but I can't love it for one simple reason; the cat house. It's bad, really bad, and it doesn't need to be. Just get rid of some species (there's plenty of cat species in the zoo) and improve conditions for the remaining ones. There are a few other enclosures in the zoo that are also on the small side, like sand cat/fennec and Persian leopard. This is too bad because Jihlava offers a lot of good stuff too, like the small monkey house, gibbon enclosure and sun bear enclosure. Jihlava also has multiple pavillions which is always a plus.
6. Ostrava. Like Jihlava, Ostrava also has a mix of good and bad. I remember the lion and leopard as well as the monkey enclosures being too small and plain in this zoo, but also a fantastic enclosure for bears and a modern Chimpanzee house.
7. Usti nad Labem. With the orangutans and elephants now gone, ywo of the biggest issues of this zoo are no more. That leaves the other primate enclosures (old, small cages), and the tiny Geoffroy's cat cage as the bad parts. Otherwise, this zoo is pretty good. The carnivore house is well done, even though not all of the enclosures are equally good. I really liked the sun bear, the otter, the jackal and the penguin enclosure. The exotarium is pretty good, too as is the terrarium. Most of the enclosures in the upper part of the zoo are simple but spacious. The new Southeast Asia house is really cool (the old elephant house)
8. Brno. I had a lot of rain during my visit to Brno, so I might be more negative that I'd be if I had a sunny day. Brno didn't really do it for me. I liked their tiger enclosure and their eagle aviary, but disliked their chimpanzee and polar bear enclosures for example. A lot of this zoo was pretty simple, and not much really stood out. But again the bad weather was probably a part of why I didn't enjoy this zoo as much as I might have.
9. Decin. Small, but overall not bad except for a few enclosures. Located on a wooded hill with lots of European species, with some cool exotics thrown in. Not a lot of stuff to see indoors, which was a pity as I visited Decin on a rainy morning.

Only one I'd rank as bad
10. Liberec. Lots of bad enclosures, too little good things. Gave me the impression not much has changed here in years, even though I had never been here before.

Zajedz is a hard one to rank because of how small it is. Also, I got a private tour that took me behind the scenes, so I have very fond memories of this zoo that might cloud my judgement. Objectively speaking, I feel like the zoo is ok. Some parts good (with one fantastic small reptile/frog/bird mixed South-American enclosure) some parts not that great (some of the lemur enclosures)

Glad to read the tigers are on phase-out, especially since they keep white tiger(s? I think I saw only one)

I saw the meerkats and baboons, I didn't see visacha's or any signage for them. I did see an empty enclosure, maybe that's were they are/used to be.

 

Cinereous vulture chick hatched few days ago. It´s first offspring for the resident pair - female (20) from Zlin and male (24) from Prague. If it survives it will go into reintroduction project in Bulgaria.

Article

 

The repaired monkey house is open to visitors again. The biggest change is dissappearance of lion-tailed macaques. And their chimpanzee group (1.2) is being introduced to a new female that arrived from Ostrava.

Their new kea exhibit is officialy open.

New species on show is white-nosed coati. Two brothers (born 2022) arrived from Jihlava and are mixed with lowland tapir.

ZooExpo house´s new frog species on show (according to press release):
Hyalinobatrachium valerioi,
Litoria caerulea,
Agalychnis lemur,
Cruziohyla craspedopus,
Triprion petasatus,
Ceratophrys cranwelli,
Dendrobates tinctorius form Citronella,
Dendrobates tinctorius azureus,
Dendrobates auratus - form Ancon Hill,
Oophaga pumilio - form Bastimentos,
Adelphobates galactonotus - form Orange,
Heterixalus alboguttatus,
Trachycephalus resinifictrix,
Dyscophus guineti

 

The zoo still keeps 1,1 South American sea lions. They are 14 years old and just today the zoo issued small press release abound changes into their training and diet.

That their exhibit looked like its long time abandoned just shows how under-invested this zoo is for decades.

 

Month of June saw a hoofstock babyboom. Surviving births:

- forest reindeer
- Przewalski's horse
- Chapmans zebra (1,0) - with blue eyes and light coloured strips
- blesbok
- roan antelope
- vicunja
- blue sheep
- markhor (0,0,2)

Also two Przewalski's horses born last year were just sent to Danish Safari park Knuthenborg.

Source

 

Lowland nyalas have a fresh calf.

And the zoo opened new bistro (which was badly needed). Summer menu are tortillas with meat, sweet potatoes, falafel, vegetable noodles, halušky (Slovak dish - potato gnocchi with topping of either sauerkraut+meat or sheep cheese) etc. You usually find just 1 (or sometimes 2) vegetarian dish in local zoo restaurants so this sounds like nice variety.

 

Diana monkey was born this month. And the second adult female in the group is expecting a baby too.

FB

 

The zoo bred booted eagle (Hieraaetus pennatus) again. It has 4 chicks now - 2 older ones are being hand-reared, the 2 younger ones grow under parents.

Source

 

27. October: A calf Visayan spotted deer was born at the zoo
3. October: Rothschilds giraffes and maneless zebras should have a new exhibit in two years it should be two times bigger than the current one