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Guyana Zoo needs $50M, still a showpiece
Co-existing together!! These two animals are housed in the same cage
Maintaining the Guyana Zoological Park has proven to be quite an expensive exercise as Chairman of the National Parks Commission, Yolanda Vasconcellos, yesterday made a call for corporate enterprises to assist in the rehabilitation of the entity.
At present, its costs at least $500,000 to feed the animals each month and, according to Vasconcellos, this does not include medical supplies, labour cost and other expenses.
As the National Parks Commission attempts to transform the zoological gardens to its prior state as the ‘joy and pride’ of the city, it will take at least $50M to rehabilitate and establish 87 cages within the zoo.
In an interview with Kaieteur News yesterday, the Chairman said at present there is an ongoing programme, where a company or a group of companies can adopt a cage and have their logo display on that cage.
She said that this is in keeping with the programme to have corporate enterprises assist in the rehabilitation of the zoo.
According to Vasconcellos, before any attempts are made to replace the animals, the Commission wants to ensure that the cages are first rehabilitated to ensure that when new animals are incorporated there is adequate habitat for them.
Nonetheless, she added, negotiations are taking place to have animals from zoos with which Guyana has a ‘Sister Zoo’ relationship to have animals transported to Guyana on an exchange basis.
“Before we get to that stage, what we want to do is first rehabilitate the cages that we have to make the animals that we have more comfortable.”
In that rehabilitation process, she added, the Commission is working towards taking more of the environment into the cages, so the animals have a more natural setting.
Guyana has ‘Sister Zoo’ relationships with Singapore, Australia, Canada, Spain and Denmark. At present, the Commission is in the process of establishing a relationship with Trinidad and Tobago’s Emperor Zoo.
Addressing the current state of the entity, Vasconcellos said that should one walk through the zoo one would see that some of the cages have more foliage and natural perches as opposed to iron pipes.
This, she said, is to allow for animals to co-exist better.
“It is also to allow them to feel more at home in a natural setting…We have also incorporated short growing fruit trees in some of the larger cages so that the animals can actually go through the process of harvesting food as they would in the wild.”
Taking a nap. The lioness at the Guyana Zoo
This process would allow for the improvement of the animals’ well being and reduce stress. “Any living animal in a confined environment will have some level of stress.
So this is being done in an effort of reducing the amount of stress that they would have…soon as we get the rehabilitation to a certain standard then we will look at bringing more animals to Guyana and expanding.” At present, the zoo attracts about 10,000 visitors per month.
However, during Carifesta this number increased significantly because a number of tourists visited the facility, Vasconcellos noted.
There are parrots, scarlet macaws, love birds, Harpy eagles, snakes, jaguars, tapirs, and monkeys among other animals at the zoo.
There is also an aquarium, which features among other fishes, Guyana’s prized arapaima. The Harpy eagles that are at the zoo have been there for the past 54 years.
When this newspaper visited the facility yesterday, there were two parrots at the entrance that were greeting visitors. ‘Hello,’ they said as visitors entered the facility.
What was humorous was the fact that the birds get a bit confused at times, telling visitors ‘bye’ even as they entered.
But according to Vasconcellos, on a good day the birds would say, ‘Hello, welcome to the zoo.’
The Chairman is calling on the media to showcase the zoo in a positive light.
“What we want to do is to have the public understand that we are conscious of the needs of the zoo; we are working towards that but it takes time and it takes money.”
She noted that members of the public must also recognize that when they visit the zoo they would see or smell things that are not always a result of non-cleaning the cages.
There are certain times when animals go through certain phases and so their odour tends to be higher when compared with other times of the month, she said. The zoo officially opened its doors to the public on January 1, 1952.
Even before the zoo opened, animals were already being housed on the zoo grounds. Manatees have been living in the Botanical Gardens ponds since 1895. (Tusika Martin)
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