Zoos
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A unique aspect of Walt Disney’s Animal Kingdom, opened on April 22 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, is that it has taken high-risk geriatric animals from older facilities, enabling some animals who have long endured bare steel and cement to end their lives in more congenial habitat. This hasn’t pleased the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida, however, which fought construction of the Animal Kingdom, and has repeatedly demanded USDA probes of animal deaths there. |
| Among the 31 deaths between September 1997 and the official opening, two Asian clawed otters––rarely attracted to vegetable matter––ate the poisonous seeds of ornamental loquats; four cheetah cubs ingested antifreeze, apparently at a previous facility; two West African crowned cranes were hit by vehicles; nine gazelles, kudu, and antelopes died from various causes, including injuries inflicted on each other in contesting territory; a dik-dik died in surgery; a rhino died from having ingested an 18-inch stick before arrival; a rhino died under anesthesia for a veterinary exam; an elderly hippo died in transit; another hippo died of infections 10 days after arrival from Europe; and some normally short-lived naked mole rats, chinchilla rabbits, and guinea pigs died. The death rate, about 4% of the 1,000-animal collection per year, is well below both wild and zoo norms. | |
| Major recent additions to zoos include a $5.8 million expansion of the Columbus Zoo’s African Jungle––part of a planned $20 million revamp that also includes enlarging the elephant and rhino exhibits and adding a manatee house––and a $4.5 million chimp facility at the Los Angeles Zoo, opened to the chimps in January but not to admit visitors until August 1. | 
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Photograph courtesy K. Lawson |
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| More than two years after a fire on Christmas Eve 1995 killed the entire Philadelphia Zoo primate collection, a series of spring blazes again showed the vulnerability of zoo housing to fire. The five-year-old, privately owned Blackwater Zoo in Charleston, West Virginia, lost five endangered lemurs and two Capuchin monkeys on March 18 when a propane space heater fell off a wall mount and ignited their quarters. | 
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| The Cincinnati Zoo lost a $4 million new manatee house on May 20, days before completion, when construction equipment somehow caught fire. No animals were lost. A predawn fire on May 28 killed more than 200 reptiles and amphibians at the Cape May County Park & Zoo, in Middle Township, New Jersey. Zoos have unique fire safety problems because, while protecting human visitors is relatively easy, they also must provide adequate heat for animals used to tropical climates, whose habitats may include flamable dry grass and brush; must limit the opportunities for animals to escape; and cannot place sprinkler systems, heat sensors, smoke detectors, or fire extinguishers anywhere within reach of a curious animal. | |
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he Orangutan Foundation, supporting the 1993 recommendation of noted orang researcher Birute Galdikas, has committed $3 million to a facility for “mistreated and unwanted American-born orangutans” at the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo, of Hilo, Hawaii, which has also received $1 million for the project from the Hawaii legislature. The orangs, many of them hybrids of different island subspecies, will not be bred. According to the Maui News, the first resident will probably be Rusty, an orang now at the Honolulu Zoo. |