Big Cat Rescue (click title to entry - thank you)
They have a campaign to stop the proliferation of White Tigers (click here)
Debate rages over the fate of Lucy the elephant at Edmonton's zoo
By Sandra Farias (CP) – 2 days ago
EDMONTON — In a hilly field filled with shrubs and trees in an undeveloped part of the zoo, a massive creature plays hide-and-seek with her keepers.
Slowly walking around a pathway the animal remembers well, she soaks up the sun and breeze while cavorting with its human friends.
"She loves grazing on the grass up here," says head zookeeper Wade Krasnow, who has been caring for the animal for almost two decades.
"She" is Lucy, a beloved Asian elephant who has been a fixture at Edmonton's Valley Zoo for the last 32 years.
Lucy is at the centre of a long-standing and escalating debate between the city-owned zoo and a growing group of high-profile animal rights advocates over how the animal should spend her remaining years.
Advocates say the Valley Zoo is too small for Lucy and that she would be happier and healthier in a larger refuge with other elephants....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jfeoaAMQ-CMIdTvLNnV2zjDGOjGw
'Tango in the Jungle' set to raise funds for Miller Park Zoo (click here)
By Scott Richardson
srichardson@pantagraph.com
Posted: Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:00 am
BLOOMINGTON -- Zoos do more than offer personal encounters with animals most people don't see anywhere else. The upcoming Zoo-Do fundraiser at Miller Park Zoo will help expand a local program that's part of a worldwide effort to save critically endangered species.
Money collected during the Sept. 12 evening of food, music, and auctions will go toward establishing the Bloomington zoo as a breeding site for Sumatran tigers. At present, fewer than 400 of the animals live on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which gives the subspecies its name. Despite game preserves and strict regulations, illegal poaching reduces their number by about 10 percent each year.
Currently, Miller Park Zoo has two male Sumatran tigers, long-time resident Besar and Rojo, a new arrival from Akron, Ohio....
Girl gorillas go ape for French pinup hunk (click here)
August 29th, 2009
By Nick Hunt – CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) — You don’t want to monkey around on a blind date, especially if your friends are also taking an interest in the same dark, handsome stranger.
So when three female gorillas at London Zoo heard that they would soon be visited by a brooding French hunk — well, they went a bit bananas.
The latest development in Anglo-French relations sees Yeboah, a 20-stone 12-year-old, leave his current home at La Boissiere Du Dore Zoo, Pays de la Loire, northwest France and head for the British capital by the end of the year....
Scientists Work To Repopulate Colombia's Skies With Condors (click here)
Andean condors were once hunted to near extinction. Now teams feed and track the giant carrion-eaters, brought from U.S. zoos, and have increased their numbers tenfold. Tourism also benefits.Reporting from Sogamoso, Colombia - In ancient times, they were revered as messengers of the gods. Later, they proudly soared on the Colombian coat of arms. But at this moment, two young condors just wanted their dinner.
And so it was that peasant "condor keepers" this month placed a cow fetus on a desolate rain-swept cliff here in the Colombian Andes, the weekly ration for Iraka and Ogonta, two females released this year in a repopulation program sponsored by the San Diego Zoo.
Donated by a local slaughterhouse, the carcasses are the ideal diet for the monumental birds -- "good-quality rotting food," as the zoo's Alan Lieberman described it.
The Andean condors are the latest of 70 birds released in Colombia since 1989 after being hatched and raised in 20 U.S. zoos, most often at the San Diego Zoo.
The reintroduction program has helped push Colombia's condor population to about 150 birds, said Orlando Feliciano, a Bogota-based veterinarian who has worked with the San Diego Zoo on the project since its inception.
In the mid-1980s, condors in Colombia numbered no more than 15, he said.For centuries condors were killed by people who either thought, mistakenly, that the carrion birds attacked their livestock or that their feathers or bones had magical or medicinal power.
"They were virtually extinct, as they are today in Venezuela," Feliciano said.
Animals and animalrights in the media worldwide: (click here)
In Amerikaanse dierentuinen opgegroeide condors naar Andes in Colombia voor toename populatie reuzen roofvogels
август 29th, 2009
The alleged star of the costly program, which parallels a program in the direction of the California condor, bespeaks the economic and personnel commitment of the U.S. The raising, transportation and outfitting of each condor with an implanted phone costs “thousands of dollars” per bird, said Michael Mace, San Diego Zoo’s curator of birds. The two condors released in February brought to 11 the total number selection untie in Boyaca glory since 2004.
“We do it because we can, as stewards of the planet, and mindful of our durability to assess as keep an eye open for down of the ecosystem and the wildlife within it,” said Lieberman, who directs the San Diego Zoo’s area programs and who has desire conducted area investigation in Colombia. (Two be preserved died, verse killed to hand a huntsman, another electrocuted on a extraordinary power on the infinitesimal catalogue for.)The glory surroundings apportion, Corpoboyaca, and a village nongovernmental organizing known as Fundetropico inculcate village schoolchildren and peasants that, adverse to stereotypical poise, condors do not effect livestock or postulate a portent to humans, but break bread exclusive carrion. The tutoring programs sell the condors’ impersonation in cleaning up the surroundings and their cultural idea....
Three Newly Acquired African Lions Will Soon Be Exhibited at Oregon Zoo (click here)
Sat, 8/29/2009 - 2:29 PM
By Bill Lamarche
Portland, OR - Three newly acquired African lions - Zawadi Mungu, Kya and Neka - got a clean bill of health this morning in preparation for their move into the Oregon Zoo's much anticipated Predators of the Serengeti exhibit, opening Sept. 12. However, acquiring these enormous felines was no small feat.
Zawadi Mungu, meaning "gift of God," is the male of the zoo's new lion pride. He is 1 year and 2 months old, and will join Kya and Neka, two females of the same age, in the zoo's new exhibit.
The lions were acquired from different zoos as part of the Oregon Zoo's new breeding program designed to help ensure the longevity of the African lion. Zawadi Mungu was acquired from the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the females came from Wisconsin's Racine Zoo and the Virginia Zoo....
A GREAT thing to do in Chicago…..and you can bring your kids! PART I (click here)
The Lincoln Park Zoo is located near the lake in Lincoln Park and is FREE every day of the year, one of the only free zoos in the country. Its small and makes a wonderful landscape for a casual stroll. It is equally conducive to a romantic stroll or the kids running around to let off steam.
The Brookfield Zoo is a more traditional zoo, sprawling and with all the exotic animals you could hope for. To be honest, my memories of zoos when I was a child ere mixed–I loved the animals and being there but I always remember being exhausted and having to walk FOREVER. Lincoln Park solves that problem because the whole zoo is small enough to walk comfortably–even if you are a kid. Brookfield is pretty well laid out and you can rent some pretty nifty conveyances if you don’t want to lug your own–strollers, wagons with shades, you name it, you can rent it....
Zoo docents fading from landscape (click here)
Mary Schmich
August 30, 2009
Jack Gelfond laid a hand across the two little metal elephants on the pocket of his safari shirt.
"It hurts me," he said. We were standing outside the Lincoln Park Zoo. He looked like he might cry. "This really hurts me."
Almost every Tuesday for 14 years, since he retired as a nationally celebrated salesman, Gelfond, a robust 78, has put on his safari shirt and headed to his docent's job.
Tuesday after Tuesday, with a vaudevillian verve, he has told visitors the length of a giraffe's tongue (18 inches) and the size of a polar bear's baby (the palm of his hand). Nothing makes him happier than persuading a scared kid to pet a snake.
Then one August day, he and the 200 or so other docents learned news that felt to many like a shot in the heart: The 38-year-old docent program would vanish on Oct. 31....
Oklahoma City Zoo approves updates to new children’s exhibit (click here)
August 29th, 2009
BY CARRIE COPPERNOLL – News OK
The Oklahoma City Zoo Trust on Wednesday approved $105,000 in changes to the zoo’s new children’s exhibit.
The additional cost is a compilation of necessary changes to the Children’s Zoo, said Tommy Bryant, zoo director of building and grounds.
The changes include rock repairs, wall expansion, cage upgrades and additional soil, pavement, drains and gates.
The changes also will improve handicap accessibility....
Monday, Aug. 31, 2009
Columbia's Riverbanks Zoo runs with the big dogs (click here)
By Joey Holleman - McClatchy Newspapers
COLUMBIA -- Riverbanks Zoo and Garden drew more visitors last year than the major zoos in Atlanta, Jacksonville, Fla., and New Orleans.
How has a zoo in the middle of a relatively poor state, in a small metropolitan area, managed to compete with the big cities? Tourism officials say it's a combination of geography, smart marketing and visionary management. It also helps that local residents have an affection for the 35-year-old facility on the banks of the Saluda River.
"Riverbanks has established themselves as a destination zoo in a place that isn't always seen as a destination city," said Dave Zunker, former vice president of the Midlands visitors bureau and now president of the Saratoga (N.Y.) Convention and Tourism Bureau. "When you go to Columbia, you go to the zoo. Most cities that size have sort of lame zoos."...
Zoo setting for Many Cultures (click here)
International Institute celebrates world theme full of entertainment
By Betty O'Neill-Roderick Special to the Beacon Journal
Published on Monday, Aug 31, 2009
The Akron Zoo's penguins wore their best tuxedos as they greeted guests at One World, Many Cultures Friday evening. Flags of many nations decorated the Zoo's Komodo Kingdom, where the fundraiser for the International Institute took place.
Executive Director Debbie May-Johnson said the institute welcomes foreign-born residents from around the world and helps them assimilate. Howard Tuber and Donna Early, who volunteer with the refugee resettlement program at the institute, said they are currently helping refugees from Nepal....
Ban for Australian zoo that sold antelope to hunter (click here)
(AFP) – 2 days ago
SYDNEY — An Australian zoo that sold endangered antelope to a hunting enthusiast has been barred from trading in animals until an investigation into the incident is completed, a media report said Monday.
The Sydney Morning Herald said authorities in New South Wales state imposed the ban after the Western Plains Zoo sold 16 blackbuck antelope to Bob McComb, who owns a property he wants to turn into a game reserve.
Blackbuck antelope, which are listed as threatened in India and Nepal, are prized by hunters for their large spiral horns.
The Herald said McComb, a member of pro-hunting political group called The Shooters Party, was part of a push to allow trophy hunting on specially designated game reserves, including his own property, the Dongadale Deer Park and Stud....
