Wellington Zoo Wellington Zoo update

so I went to Wellington Zoo last week, for the first time in several years. One of the things I noticed was the big decline in birds. Wellington used to have one of the country's best bird collections but there is very little diversity there now. One aviary even had bantams in it, and others were making do with magpies and golden pheasants. Several species were down to just one or two specimens, even from species that could be readily obtained from private aviculturists in NZ. The complete bird list (as far as I could tell) was as follows:
ostrich
emu
North Island brown kiwi
Australian pelican
little pied shag (although the sign on the aviary said little black shag)
banded rail
brolga
white heron
Himalayan monal
golden pheasant
bantam
NZ scaup
Campbell Island teal
mandarin duck
Australian shelduck
Cape Barren goose
Derbyan parrot
sun conure
red-fronted macaw
North Island kaka
kea
red-tailed black cockatoo
Leadbeater's (pink, or Major Mitchell's) cockatoo
greater sulphur-crested cockatoo
NZ pigeon
Australian crested pigeon
emerald dove (green-winged pigeon)
tawny frogmouth
morepork (apparently, in the Kiwi House)
common kookaburra
Australian magpie

Other noticeable things included the very poor signage now being used. I liked the warning signs (don't feed the animals, etc) for their amusement value, but the actual animal signs have been reduced to a photo and two sentences of information. All very well for your average visitor who is incapable of reading but for the visitors who are actually interested there is nothing to cater to them -- not even the scientific name of the animal!! In my opinion they should have the simple signs for the idiots and then some more informative ones for the others.


warning sign


animal information sign

Where did all the bats go? There used to be dozens of little red flying foxes at the zoo, hanging all over the top of the aviary now housing cotton-tops, agoutis, sun conures and red-fronted macaws; as well as filling the enclosures in the old Kiwi House. Now there is only a handful of bats in the historic elephant house (which is now used mainly for displaying reptiles).

And speaking of the Kiwi House, the new one (now about five years old I believe?) is terrible. I work with kiwi myself and talk to lots of tourists who have visited other Kiwi Houses, and I have only ever met ONE person who has actually seen anything in Wellington Zoo's new Kiwi House. It is dark obviously, but a little too dark for visitors and for some reason there are white/blue lights arranged in such a way that whichever way you turn you tend to get them shining right in your eyes so you never get accustomed to the darkness. With this in mind, the small size of the enclosure, the fact that it is open and walk-through (so no barriers to keep down sound), and that there is only a single kiwi in there anyway, it's really a wonder that ANYONE has seen the kiwi in there!

On the good side of things they have quite a good reptile collection now (for a NZ zoo), mostly inside the historic elephant house and by the old Kiwi House; with more in a breeding room round the side of the elephant house, viewable through a window. There is a baby chimpanzee, born 22 October last year. The young male lions were very active with their dead goats. There was a family of Americans identifying the African wild dogs as wallabies (!).

 

future development model

below is the zoo's model of their future development plans which NZ Jeremy asked me to photograph. Its not the best (there are little labels all over it with animal names but they can't be seen in the photo) but its the best I could manage. The model is dated as June 2005. I've drawn the plan out myself to get photos with legible labelling. Just ask if there's anything you can't read. There are some... shall we say, "interesting" animals on the map, such as harpy eagle, fossa and chevrotain, as well as some like Francois' langur that Australian zoos are working with but that are currently not in NZ. In fact at least seventeen of the species on the model aren't in NZ currently as far as I'm aware, although feel free to correct me on any that are (fossa, capybara, harpy eagle, pigmy marmoset, Philippine deer, chevrotain, clouded leopard, Francois' langur, impala, nyala, bushbuck, ground hornbill, crowned crane, caracal, "vulture", bongo, colobus). They have "black leopard" labelled as being by the Amphitheatre, which is in the South American section, so I'm not sure what that's about. Where it says "S.A. Aviary", by the spider and capuchin monkey island, I'm assuming it means "South American Aviary". The ruffed lemur island also has ring-tailed lemurs on it. Its interesting there is no zebra on the plan at all, and that the "cheetah run" appears to be on one of the steeper parts of the zoo!




left side


right side

The "African Savannah" has already opened (there is still a sign on the exhibit itself saying "our new African Savannah is opening this summer") and at the moment houses only the giraffes and ostrich. The Grant's zebras were also moved here but didn't get on with the giraffes so were moved back to their previous enclosure. The girls at the counter told me that blackbuck were going in there as well (or perhaps were already in there) which I was a bit confused about. I suggested maybe they meant bushbuck (as these are on the future plans, although I don't know of any in NZ) but they were adamant they were blackbuck, even though I pointed out that they come from Asia not Africa. I am now of the opinion that they must have meant springbok, but I'm not really sure. Anyway, the area of the exhibit isn't exactly large so I don't know how they plan on having all the species they want in it (giraffe, springbok, impala, nyala, ostrich, crowned crane and ground hornbill) unless they only have a couple of each which hardly seems worthwhile.

 

historic animal notes on the zoo

this is just some notes on animals that used to be at the zoo when I first visited in about 1988 and which are now no longer there. Just for anyone that's interested. I've only been to Wellington Zoo three times, first in about 1988, then in 2002, and lastly this month. Its mostly from memory and photos I took at the time (and before anyone asks, I don't have a scanner so can't post those photos).

The lake near the start where the islands for gibbons and monkeys are now, then was just a big lake with a little railway running around it. Down the end was the section for mainly-Australian waterbirds, including pelicans (probably the same ones they still have), Australian wood ducks and magpie geese, as well as two capybara. The sun bear enclosure was then still two adjoining pits landscaped only with narrow concrete terraces -- if you think its bad now, it was much worse then; on one side was an American black bear (brown in colour), on the other just some small-clawed otters because the Asiatic black bear had recently passed on to the great jungle in the sky. Where the servals are now there were then snow leopards (with newly-born cubs) and what is now the kea aviary was then used for wedge-tailed eagles. The site of the meerkat enclosure by the kiosk was then a pool for koi and turtles. There was a little aquarium near here too but I'm not sure exactly where (the only tank I remember had convict cichlids swimming amongst bricks).

Other mammals were sitatunga, fallow deer, llama, blackbuck, American bison, Geoffroy's cat, coati, kinkajou, raccoon, Eurasian badger, Arctic wolf, camel, bobcat, siamang, Diana monkey and euro. There were sugar gliders in an enclosure in the Kiwi House. My guide book from the time also has leopards and puma but I don't remember them. Many of the above species are no longer found in NZ at all.

Birds included wonga pigeons, noisy pittas (there was still one left in 2002), Radjah shelduck, Antipodes Island parakeets, nicobar pigeons, green peafowl, nankeen night herons, barn owls, lots of waders and parrots, and others I can't recall. In 2002 there were blue and gold macaws (and the cotton-top tamarins were then free-ranging, which I remember because they were running over the aviary harrassing the macaws who weren't too happy about it). I'm pretty sure there were golden lion tamarins in a glass-fronted enclosure near the entrance to the zoo in 2002 as well, but I may be confusing them with somewhere else.

Reptiles included common iguana, Gould's monitor, and an American alligator in the waterbird aviary (apparently it once ate a spur-winged plover but generally behaved itself).

 

The species that leapt out at me the most was the harpy eagle. I mean, that just seems completely out of the blue.

The only caracals I've ever seen in NZ were a pair at the Mini Zoo in Christchurch in the late 1980s. I don't know where the zoo's owner Bill Grey imported them from but they were the only ones in NZ. They disappeared from the collection quite a while before the zoo closed down and I suspect they died.

Of the other species I mentioned from the development plan that aren't in NZ at the moment -- [fossa, capybara, harpy eagle, pigmy marmoset, Philippine deer, chevrotain, clouded leopard, Francois' langur, impala, nyala, bushbuck, ground hornbill, crowned crane, "vulture", bongo, colobus] -- the only species I've seen before in NZ is the capybara, at Wellington on my c.1988 visit and these were probably the only ones in the country. I doubt any of the others have been in NZ for a very long time (if ever, in many cases).

NZ zoos are generally always poor in birds. Private aviculture in NZ centres on parrots and finches, with the small addition of several species of pigeons and a few pheasants and waterfowl. The zoos' bird collections naturally mainly consist of the species thus available. That is why I liked Wellington's formerly more diverse collection so much, because they had many species that weren't just the usual run-of-the-mill species. Even when a zoo did have a good bird collection in the past it often fades away almost entirely (as at Orana Park which used to have many non-native birds), or the more-exotic less-easily-replaced species bow out and are replaced with common ones. Although there have been no private bird importations for many years in NZ, the ban on importing birds doesn't apply to zoos (except in as much as they need to abide by biosecurity regulations etc). So the lack of exotic birds in NZ is more to do with the zoos not putting the effort into them than anything else. The impression I always get here (in NZ) is that the zoos seem to think that the bird section isn't popular enough to warrant much attention put into it. People want to see lions and monkeys after all, so why bother with fancy birds when a few cockatoos and doves will do.

If "S.A. Aviary" does stand for "South American" I suspect it will contain conures and macaws and probably little else (they'll probably stick the agoutis and so forth in here too). The Asian aviary will have pheasants on the bottom, a few Psittacula parrots, a pigeon or two, mandarin ducks, and maybe mannikins -- unless they plan on importing some hornbills or something like that.

And yes the NZ section does seem small (the only labels there were tuatara, kiwi, weta, and NZ Aviary, although the latter may mean an aviary complex rather than one large aviary), as does the Australian section (Australian Aviary, and parma and rock wallabies -- although note that the plan was made before the wallabies on Kawau Island were exterminated by poisoning so there may not be any parma or rock wallabies left in the country(?)).

 

Kawau Island was once owned by Sir George Grey (Governor of NZ) and he used it as a private free-range menagerie of sorts, introducing all manner of foreign animals including five species of wallabies. If he had introduced thylacines as well that would have been great but he didn't and the wallabies went out of control with no predators. The island is an important kiwi and weka area and the wallabies are destroying all habitat. In 1992 the Pohutukawa Trust New Zealand was formed by private citizens on the island with the aim of eradicating the wallabies and possums on Kawau. They are supported in this endeavour by DoC and the Auckland Regional Council. Their plan was for all wallabies to be gone by 2005. I'm not actually sure if it has been completed yet, but large-scale poisoning was definitely carried out a few years ago.

Parma wallabies had previously been exported to Australia (at that time they were thought to be extinct in Aus). The tammar wallabies turned out to be a mainland subspecies formerly also thought extinct. Before poisoning was carried out, many parma, tammar and brush-tailed rock wallabies (endangered in Aus) were exported to Aus to establish captive populations there. There are still large numbers of tammar around Rotorua which are probably descended from Kawau animals. There are also thousands of red-necked (Bennett's) wallabies in the South Island.

With possums and wallabies eradicated from Kawau the island will become another island sanctuary for NZ species such as kokako, saddleback, etc etc.

 

if you look at the species on the plan, even if some of them seem odd choices (harpy, fossa, etc) others are obviously because those species are, were, or were planning on being, part of managed programmes in Australia (eg, Francois' langur, Brazilian tapir, pigmy marmoset, etc); and as patrick (and I think Nigel earlier in the thread) said, the antelope selection is due to the South African director. So most of them are explainable.

Maned wolves, which Nigel was discussing previously in the thread (but aren't on the development model), have been on the cards for several NZ zoos for years now, as have clouded leopards and snow leopards. They're always talking about getting them. Whether it happens or not is another matter.

 

there are two views of the model on the gallery now

 

never thought about that. A Himalayan exhibit in NZ would work really well.

We also have yaks in NZ, so they could be thrown in there as well.