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NEWS FROM THE ZOO
Here's the latest goings on at Franklin Zoo  Tommy, our cute otter, is soon to be joined by another friendly otter named Paddles. Read about it in our August Zoo Diary. |
Zoo Diary November 2007
One of the most satisfying parts of zoo life is creating new homes and environments for the animals that live here. It is obviously great for the animals.Anyone who watched the recent The Zoo episode where Tony, the baboon from Franklin Zoo was introduced to his new home and other baboons in their spacious enclosure at Auckland Zoo will know what I am talking about.
Likewise, watching the lions at Franklin Zoo go out into their new home is like a tonic in the morning as they run at full speed and then playfully stalk each other from their various hiding places, something they never had the opportunity to do before.
We are about to embark on our next large scale enclosure habitat at Franklin Zoo and this will be for the spider and capuchin monkeys.This will be a much larger, free ranging environment. What is now a large bare paddock with a number of vertical and horizontal logs, will be transformed over the coming months into a replica of the South American rainforest.
The first job is to fence off the area for planting to keep out browsing llamas, emus and Nanny, the resident goat. The next stage will be estabilishing the green look. Four metre high Washington palms have been donated to the the area to provide mature height and these will be underplanted with smaller palms of varying heights.
Tough native flaxes will also be included along with fast growing clumps of bamboo and ferns.The monkeys will be able to move around the enclosure up high on vertical logs with a maze of heavy ropes connecting them.
The next stage will be building the fence and the visitor walkway, and then finally building a new night house and den for both groups of monkeys. We will be fundraising for these last two stages.
On a much smaller scale but no less impressive is the new ponds and waterfall in the snake-necked turtle and zebra finch enclosure. Their area has been re-landscaped to resemble a watercourse in arid, in-land Australia.
The turtles are enjoying their new watery home and the zebra finches flit down to bath in the running water. Check this out next time you are visiting Franklin Zoo.
The animals are now enjoying the warmer weather and longer days and all the staff are working hard to get the zoo looking good for the coming summer months.
Come and join us we are open every day 9am 5 pm with Wild Encounters every day at 2pm.
Graeme Strachan
Manager Life Services
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| Tamarins |
| Our tamarins, Merinda and Flossie, are best friends. They spend most of their day in the trees, hardly ever coming down to the ground. Because they are tree dwellers, if you look carefully youll see they have long fingers and toes for gripping branches, and claws for climbing. And of course, a very clever tail for balance. |
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