Your Czech mate's (sometimes) short thoughts about Czech zoos

Given the fact that after I finished school I had a significant amount of free time, I (surprisingly) decided to spend it traveling through some Czech zoos. During those visits, a lot of thoughts came up so I decided to share them here. My intention is not to make yet another traveling thread with long and detailed reports about each animal and exhibit, but rather describe some general feeling of the zoo and maybe even raise some talking points.

02. 07. 2020 - Zoo Na Hrádečku

Starting very unorthodoxly, in not some of the "bigger" ones, but rather in one of the newest additions to the Czech zoo family. Hrádeček, opened to public since 2014 located in village Horní Pěna near Jindřichův Hradec in South Bohemia, in relatively close proximity of other south bohemian zoos (Tábor, Dvorec, Hluboká). This was my 2nd visit, the first one was in autumn 2019. On both occasions, I was greeted by the owner herself, was given a tour.

You can really see that Hrádeček is a private zoo, all the exhibits are done in a simple way, but most of them are adequate for their inhabitants. Being perfectly honest, I am not a huge fan of private zoos, at least in our country, but Hrádeček is certainly making a strong case for them. They also do an important job that the bigger zoos sometimes just can't do such as rescuing animals from bad conditions/held illegally. Also for the future, I feel like they have the best potential in terms of development as they have loads of space available, invest smartly, and have good contacts in other zoos. Currently, they are preparing new aviaries for macaws and keas and a capybara exhibit.

Pictures available here

07.07. 2020 - Zoo Liberec
Visited for the 3rd time, the previous two visits happened 5+years ago.

What to say about Liberec...for sure it is an interesting zoo in the last couple of years mostly known as one of those very honest and vocal about management euthanasia and other not so pleasant zoo issues. In terms of zoo-quality, Liberec is the oldest zoo in our country and it really shows...Liberec also struggles with funds as the city itself isn't in a financially good state. While some smaller exhibits have alright quality, most of those for bigger and notable species are in a poor state. Looking at lushly planted pheasants aviary, or flamingo exhibit is nice and everything, but then you see one of the worst Tapir exhibit which makes you feel very uncomfortable. It will be interesting to see how will Liberec look in a couple of years. They plan to enlarge the zoo and build some cheap, low-upkeep exhibits, that could really help the zoo to attract more visitors, giving zoo more funds and first and foremost, raising the welfare level of animals kept. Also, interestingly enough, while strong in hoofstock and birds of prey section, some other groups are very poorly represented mainly herps and fish.

Pictures available here

More reports will be added in the coming days.

 

Liberec was a zoo I really enjoyed but felt as if I shouldn't have. I think being surrounded by so many caprini taxa got me so excited I forgave the likes of the baboon cage, the chimp enclosure and the elephant house. I also enjoyed the bird of prey aviaries.

 

Na Hrádečku is one of the better private zoos in the country. However it suffers the same mayor ill as the others do, it´s a one (wo-)man show. The inherent quick and wild demise of any private zoo once its owner gets old / gets short on money / loses interest is what disturbs me every time I visit one of those.

The only case of different outcome is the purchase of zoo Tabor by a real estate tycoon who liked animals and didn´t want to see its end. But I am afraid supply of similar people is limited if not zero.

At the same, the quick rise of new small private zoos and petting farms shows rising demand for such experience by general public. Large public owned zoos are clearly not meeting this demand. I don´t know how to reconcile this.

Regarding Liberec, it´s a really sad case. In the 1990s, it was one of the big and prestigious zoo I enjoyed to visit, day trip in combination with nearby botanical garden or Ještěd was always a highlight. But inherited buildings getting old, lack of money, lack of parking space, gave us this outcome. The heavily indebted city of Liberec cut subsidies and even took out asset accruals from the zoo, making even basic enclosure upgrades in most cases a mission impossible. Even sadder is this considering the director itself is a passionate, knowledge-rich, compassionate and just man (my opinion based on interviews and actions). It´s just not fair. Maybe, if the city would stop the neglect and allow planned land enlargement for cold-tolerant species, it could turn it slowly around, as you mentioned.

 

My thoughts are very similar, the park itself (horticulture, etc...) is very neat, being partly in forest and not extremely hilly makes it for a good visit even in hotter days, but then there are some places, you would prefer not to see.

This is a good point and something I see as a bit of concern too, but even in this aspect, I feel that Hrádeček has a somewhat better position than others as the owner is younger than your average private zoo-owner and thus she might have more time to establish it as a mainstay tourist attraction that will be eventually able to attract a new owner. Possibly they are on par with Dvorec if the son of the current owner takes it over from him eventually, but I must say that I don't follow these other private parks much so you will be probably able to judge it more accurately.

Yeah...the parking is quite something, although apparently the worst is actually not the parking itself but rather leaving from the zoo as the streets around the zoo have some weird system of one way traffic established.

 

Liberec zoo is the only one in our country that, when I want to visit, I always use a navigation in my car. One unexpected or wrong turn in the town (due to traffic or construction or anything) and I get trapped in a labyrinth.

 

This discussion is very reassuring. When last I went to Liberec I got hopelessly lost and ended up parking about six hours’ walk away (or maybe it just felt that far in the scorching heat!).

 

I went by public transport, it's a short tram ride from the train station,. Armed with only the word Ahoj in a town where no one seemed to speak English, I still found it a breeze.

 

Well, parking and/or traffic are more or less issue for most zoos in Czech, it seems

 

Parking is usually the bigger issue, as the public transport network works really well for most zoos...

 

14. 07. - Zoo Praha
Last visited in February 2020

Visiting Prague always feels a bit like going abroad while not leaving the country, mainly due to huge amounts of foreign tourists a the high standard of the zoo itself. The first post-corona visit obviously meant that this time it will be without the former, although I did hear other languages here and there. Arriving at the opening time I was greeted by the usual big queue of visitors. Not overly massive as I remember it from previous times but still pretty big. As I didn't have the whole day for the zoo this time and I wanted to spend there as much time as possible, I decided by quickly assessing how fast is the queue going, to purchase an online ticket through my phone, which allowed me to jump cca 200 people and saved me like 10-15 minutes of waiting.

Given the time limitations, I knew that I will have to skip certain parts of the zoo in order to see my main targets. Those were Tasmania exhibit, black and rufous sengis, and some bird aviaries that were recently refurbished.

Tasmania exhibit is really pleasantly done, the vegetation looks good already (bar the waterfowl exhibit, but that is somewhat understandable) and I am sure it will get only better as the years will go. My only concern is that the exhibits that will hold wombats in the future and now have wonderfully green grass carpet, will look much worse once the wombats arrive.


21. 07. - Zoo Zlín-Lešná
Last visited summer 2019

Visiting possibly two best Czech zoos shortly after each other was a great way to compare two zoos having very different philosophies, conditions, budgets, amount of financial support from the city council,...and yet Zlin can be on the same level and even beat Prague in some aspects.

Starting the visit as I always do going to the educational boards close to Tropical house where the zoo shows interesting bits from zoo economy, compared to other Czech zoos (how much money they get from the city, how financially sustainable they are, etc...) Zlin always presented this in a very noticeable way, because even though they don't really get much money from city of Zlin, they have high financial sustainability (almost 90%) being best in the country in this aspect rivaled only by, you guessed it, Prague then there is a significant drop to other zoos. They always have these stats up to date so I am always excited to see how the numbers changed...and this year here came my first disappointment: For some reason, Union of Czech and Slovak zoos decided, that these numbers won't be public anymore so the board showed old data I already know. I wonder what and who could've caused this change...

More to the zoo itself, Zlin is just great (and almost a place of my first permanent job after graduating, but it wasn't meant to be ), it is located in castle gardens, the horticulture and whole park design are amazing, wonderful bird collection with many rarities...although I must say as some species were moved either off-show or away from the collection, some aviaries looked much more lifeless, mainly the one housing painted storks, and going through it felt very weird...The zoo is steadily working on the Karibuni development (Elephants, safari exhibits, etc...), capybaras have new summer exhibit as well, but it looks like the Jaguar exhibit planned to open in 2021 will be postponed.

Speaking of summer exhibits, this is my only slight issue with Zlin - they are overly focused on making exhibits that look good during the summer season, but during winter you can't really see much here...I wouldn't be surprised if, down the years they eventually switched to some sort of "Pairi Daiza's opening schedule" and closing the zoo altogether during winter months. Karibuni is already confirmed to be working this way. It will be opened only during the main season and only some small part will be opened in winter, also people will pay separate entrance fee to get there.


A bit longer post today ... anyways, next week is probably the last one with significant amount of free time at least for some time sooo...is there any particular Czech zoo you lot would like me to visit and write about it here?

 

Felled behind a bit with those, so let's get back to it. I am sure you are eagerly waiting on what comes next

23. 07. - Zoo Jihlava
Last visit: February 2020

I'll start with a promise that I will try to be as unbiased as possible.
Jihlava is a small zoo in size, but a big zoo in the heart. Director and zoological department do have a taste for rarities but at the same time know that it can't be just about them.

As it stands, the zoo is pretty much at maximum space available, so every step of development needs to be planned carefully. It will be very interesting to see how will the planned Roloway's monkey exhibit pan out, Jihlava proved many times that they can make stuff work even if there is not much available in terms of resources...but I still am slightly concerned that it will be very cramped unless they have some interesting solution prepared. I wonder how far in talks they are about the reconstruction of cat house (if there even are any...) because at this point it is pretty much major weakness of the zoo (maybe on par with pygmy hippos) and it will be harder and harder to justify keeping animals in it.

I wonder, how would Jihlava look if the current staff had a much bigger area available, where could they express their ideas...

10. 08. - Safari Park Dvůr Králové
Last visit: 2018

Born too late to witness the golden age of Dvur, but soon enough to see its stagnation, eventual fall from grace to "the darkest timeline" and now its steady renaissance. Even though I visited zoos during workdays, I was still expecting that at some point will I arrive to a completely packed zoo, but I would never expect that zoo to be Dvur. Even in Prague, the people did somehow spread throughout the zoo and it felt alright. However, the combination of nice weather, raising popularity of Dvur and its small area (also, the zoo is pretty much packed by design) meant that I was still meeting reasonably big crowds (except for one forgotten corner of the zoo, where even I rarely go).

The changes that happen after Dvur "quit" EAZA and WAZA, were really a blessing in the long-term...They are doing all the right things now - making hoofstock stables on-show so you can see animals even in winter, improving the older exhibits, bringing interesting species (as much as Africa-only policy allows), working well with media...

Refurbished Bird house is a very nice addition, although I really miss the old days when the when there was no orangutan exhibit, so the walkthrough jungle was slightly bigger with a more diverse collection. Walkthrough wetland aviary just opposite the bird house is impressive as well with around 20 bird species and very dense planting.

After being down the pecking order, Dvur now managed to establish themselves very firmly in top 5 Czech zoos and they can very well become top 3 (if you give them free-pass on the fact that only African species are present) in future if they continue like this and if a recent interview with the director is anything to go by, they certainly don't plan to stop...

P. S.: Very nice touch (especially for Czechs, but I'm sure some of you will appreciate it too) from gastro point of view - Dvur has its own brewery. They are making cca 5 types of beer, I brought 3 of them home and look forward to tasting them (apparently, as my friends told me, they are very good)

 

Jihlava is one of my most favourite zoo but even if I left aside personal opinions, nice facility.
Cat house, while surely not worst, is really shame, taking into account that cats are traditional Jihlava speciality... Former director mentioned possible enlargement of cats paddocks (there is still at least some space around house...) so, there are/were some talks about it (but that article is some three years old...)

 

Forget the zoo reviews, what were the beers like?

 

They've got Malayan sun beers

 

I am yet to taste them, will update once I am done with it

 

Prague - yes, the zoo gets many international visitors (mostly Russians during winter for some reason), which now bites them because they seem unable to cover this loss by attracting more Czechs with limited parking space and buses stuck in traffic jams. Overall, the zoo is nice and each visit is enjoyable. But I don´t like projects of the current director, overpriced and at the same time not good enough for animals, he seems to not manage investments good. I hate how much concrete is used, it will be a hell to do major future improvements or demolitions of such buildings. I have some gripes with animal care (like horrendous neglect of flamingos care in last decade) and so on. On the other side, I like Indian food offered near elephants and salads near main entrance. And just love the cableway, it´s like returning to my childhood. I don´t know what the future will bring, way too many projects get announced just to be shelved later.

Zlin - I am a sucker for nicely managed gardern and parks, I love places like Průhonice, so the Zlín zoo is a gem to me just for its well maintained english park alone. I loved it even in old humble "wooden" times, when there were for example individual ancient small bird cages near the castle that looked like half-collapsed chicken cages overgrown with weed. But when I looked through thick double mesh, there was my first Green oropendola pair, for exemple. No person in sight in 1 kilometer radius, just immaculate park in full bloom and me, this cage before me and black storks at pond behind me. The bird section used to be the only really interesting part of Zlín collection, mammals used to be pure ABC without much aspirations (it´s changing for better slowly in recent years), while reptiles is just afterthought. The most popular exhibit is ray petting basin hands down, people love it and I am surprised no other european zoo copied it yet. The zoo gets raving reviews usually and if they manage new developments good (Karibuni etc.), they might some day get over 1 mio despite their location.

 

Yes, those were my favorite as well! It is understandable why they had to be let go, but it would be lovely if they'd sometimes come back.

Here I will object a bit at least to that "not good enough for animals", from the recent developments (Australia, Parrots), Australia is perfectly fine for all the species present. Parrot house could be done a bit better imo in some parts, but I would certainly call it adequate as a whole.

Could you name some examples where it was used "too much?" the only thing that springs to my mind is the new gorilla house, where part of the climbing structure will be made from concrete...

 

Well were there yet some other bigger developments under Bobek, outside of these two?
My probably biggest issue with new exhibits in Prague is probably the one for hippos - outside paddock seem to be a bit small. Also, not even tiny bit of a grass. I wouldn´t say its bad, but think it can be done better (on the other hand, it could be pretty easily expanded on the expense of neighboring antelopes)

Also, if we are speaking about over-use of concrete - what do you guys think about Brno?