Conservation Action
At Wellington Zoo, conservation colours everything we do, from our learning programmes to making the Zoo a more environmentally sustainable workplace. Every day our visitors have the opportunity to see up close some of the most endangered species on the planet. We tell our visitors the story of Tahi, a kiwi whose fate at the hands of human kiwis has left him with only one leg and we share with our visitors what they can do to help conserve the wildlife around them.
Community Conservation
At Wellington Zoo we’re making local conservation our priority. By participating in the Kererû Discovery Project and initiating the Wellington Bush Builders programme, we’re trying to encourage Wellingtonians to come on the conservation journey with us. Our projects are community based so that conservation is a real achievable goal for Wellingtonians, not just a distant concept.
Kererû Discovery Project
The Kererû (New Zealand wood pigeon) Discovery Project is a unique environmental and community-based research project. The objective is to monitor kererû, its sources of food and the threats to it in the greater Wellington region. Kererû is the only bird that still disperses the large seeds of many indigenous trees and it is believed that kererû, a forest dwelling bird, may be able to adapt to the urban landscape.
The Project, comprising a number of partners – Wellington Zoo, Te Papa, Department of Conservation, Victoria University and Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, was launched in August 2006 at Te Papa, with patron Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in attendance.
Since March this year, Wellington Zoo’s research fellow, Monica Awasthy has been catching up kererû from Otari Wilton’s Bush and attaching lightweight radio transmitters to them in order to track their movements. Monica’s research and the urban journey of the kererû has also been an integral part of our learning team’s focus this year.
Maureen Gillies, one of the Zoo’s educators, visited Otari School several times so students could learn how to carry out observations of animals, behavioural and physical adaptations of the kererû and what scientists do. Students then came for a visit to the Zoo where they became scatologists (poo scientists) for the day and discovered how crucial the kererû is in the food web of the New Zealand bush. During the project they had the use of the same type of tracker as Monica has been using to track kererû.
Wellington Bush Builders
The Wellington Bush Builders project (formerly the Green Corridor) is a conservation education venture designed to reconnect urban children to local wildlife, encouraging hands on exploration and promoting change in behaviour.
The aim of this project is to increase awareness in urban children, their parents and community of their local environment, to monitor the wildlife that lives close to the city centre, and to establish and maintain a sustainable population of native flora and fauna. Students can take steps towards creating a “green corridor” in the heart of Wellington. By planting in the city, children will create areas of vegetation that are stepping stones for wildlife linking to the green belt that surrounds the city.
Planning for Wellington Bush Builders is well underway, with some activities being trialled in term four, ready for implementation in term one 2008. Operational funding for Wellington Bush Builders is supported by a grant from the Wellington Region Foundation.
Kaka
Five kaka bred at Wellington Zoo were released into mainland wildlife sanctuaries in June 2007. Three birds were released into Karori Sanctuary and the other two were released into Maungatautari Sanctuary in the Waikato.
Wellington Zoo staff volunteered at Karori Sanctuary during the kaka breeding season, monitoring nest boxes and helping to weigh and measure eggs. Karori Sanctuary offers a great learning experience as a place to contribute to in situ conservation in urban Wellington.
The introduction of Zoo-bred birds to the two sanctuary’s populations will help to ensure the genetic diversity of this iconic species in both Wellington and the Waikato.
Research
Monica Awasthy, Wellington Zoo’s inaugural Research Fellow and Victoria University PhD student has been radio-tracking and netting kererû in Otari-Wilton’s Bush for her research on urban birds.
She is studying kererû in order to learn more about the habits of urban kererû as anecdotal evidence tells us that their population in the city is increasing. The kererû that are caught are fitted with coloured leg ID bands and tail mounted transmitters; these transmitters are about as big as a ten cent piece and allow us to track the bird for up to a year.
Currently very little is known about the kererû’s behaviour and we’re hoping this research will help us discover more about the habits of New Zealand’s native pigeon. We’re particularly interested in habitat use, feeding preferences and social interactions with other kererû.
Monica’s research is funded by a grant from the Lottery Trust Board – Environment and Heritage Fund.
Other research that Wellington Zoo has been involved in this year includes the study of Aggression and the female environment in captive Hamadryas baboon; The Communication of Ethics in Management – A case study of Wellington Zoo and one of our keepers took a leave of absence to research rare snails on the West Coast of the South Island in association with the Department of Conservation.
Greening the Zoo
When it comes to sustainability, we need to walk the talk. Adopting an increasingly sustainable way of life at the Zoo helps us to not only save our planet it also helps to reduce our bills. We used even less water this year than we did last year and we’ve saved a massive 20 million litres of water over the last two years. That’s as much water as 100 average sized households use per year. Not only are we conserving water but we’re saving money, our water bills have almost halved over the last two years.
This year through simple steps like waste separation – directing bio-degradable refuge for composting, re-use of some plastics and the recycling of other plastics, cans, glass, cardboard and paper, the amount of waste sent to landfill from the Zoo has reduced from 93 percent of total waste to just 19 percent. An additional 70 percent was sent for composting and 11 percent recycled. With the help of the Shell New Zealand Sustainability Fund, we have also installed recycling bins throughout the Zoo so visitors can do their part by recycling their waste. This fund also allowed us to begin planning to install a composter at the Zoo, which will mean that much of our organic waste will not leave the Zoo’s site and will reduce our waste output even further.
Three more water reservoirs have been installed around the Zoo, increasing the amount of recycled water that we can use for cleaning enclosures, refilling animal ponds and for supplying hand basins and cisterns in visitor toilets.
There are other small changes we’ve made throughout the Zoo to become more sustainable. Underfloor insulation has been installed to several Zoo buildings in an effort to reduce the need for heating and throughout the Zoo sensors have been installed to switch off electrical systems when they’re not in use.
Veterinary Care
Despite the cramped space and limited facilities in our current hospital, we continue to work as a leading centre for innovative veterinary care. From giving Cantik, our female tiger an ovariohysterectomy to removing a painful bladder stone from a red panda, to treating a spider monkey with suspected heart failure, the care and welfare of our animals is of utmost importance to Wellington Zoo.
Over the last year our animal hospital has seen 711 cases of ill or injured animals, or problems that needed research in the laboratory. Wellington Zoo has again been supported by local healthcare experts, who donate their time and expertise to help us give our animals the best care possible. This year we have worked with staff from Wellington Hospital, Wakefield Hospital, Massey University and with Pacific Radiology – whose partnership with Wellington Zoo provides invaluable support with diagnostic techniques.
Unfortunately, not all our stories have positive outcomes. We continue to battle lung infections and salmonella infections in our birds – the result of some aviaries being outdated or located in cool damp surroundings. To combat this, one of the upcoming projects in our development plan involves relocating our birds to healthier, warmer spaces.
In the hospital we have supervised and taught three veterinary students and three vet nursing students doing work experience. This is a great opportunity for them to find out what working in a Zoo is really like.
Their main duties are to work with our vet nurses, going on rounds around the Zoo and helping with servicing and medicating any animals that are under medical care. Longer term vet students usually get the lovely job of doing any faecal floats that come in, the routine parasite screening we do in-house. They also help with all sorts of jobs around hospital, even vacuuming the floors and filing.
The students learn a lot while they are with us, but once the new Wellington Zoo Conservation Hospital is built, it will be an even better opportunity. The hospital will be the first of its kind in the lower North Island and one of our main aims is to ensure more veterinary students have access to a world class Zoo based resource. They will be able to work in a state-of-the-art facility that will be a fantastic place for them to learn about caring for animals – and not just Zoo animals but also any wildlife that we may be looking after.
Working with Our Animals
To help care for our animals we regularly work with them to encourage them to present various body parts to their keepers. This means we can conduct regular health checks without resorting to anaesthesthia. This reduces the stress level for both animals and Zoo staff. The industry term for these processes that encourage healthy animal behaviours in a Zoo environment is animal conditioning.
Our big success story of the year has been training Cantik the tiger to be hand injected with anaesthetic before her operation. Normally the anaesthetic would be delivered through a dart from a dart gun. Most of the animals in the Zoo, not surprisingly, get very stressed at the sight of the dart gun and Cantik is no exception. To eliminate most of this stress she was trained to be hand injected.
To condition her to accept having the needle hand injected, Zoo staff practised with a capped needle, a knitting needle and an actual needle for several months before her operation.
In the end, the injection went smoothly and it only took around four minutes for the anaesthetic to be injected into her, which meant less stress for Cantik and for her keepers.
The successful animal conditioning programme was this year extended to include meerkats, zebras and porcupines. Thanks to the new chimpanzee night house we have also been able to expand the conditioning and enrichment of the chimps to encompass a whole range of medical checks and other activities. The giraffes are being trained to step into a crate ready for their move into the new African Savannah.
Animal Collection
To tell diverse and interesting conservation stories and to play our part in local and international breeding programmes, we need to manage a healthy collection of both New Zealand and exotic species. Some animals have come to Wellington Zoo because of our previous success in breeding them, for example, Sean the Malayan sun bear. This faith in the Zoo was rewarded when Sasa the bear cub was born this year. For the first time in the Zoo’s history, we have successfully hatched and raised juvenile kaka that were subsequently released into two wildlife sanctuaries in New Zealand’s North Island.
The animal collection at Wellington Zoo has grown this year. Some of our recent additions include:
- A number of New Zealand native species including a female kererû , a pair of kaka and four tuatara from the Southland Museum. The kererû and kaka will participate in breeding programmes and the tuatara will be used as advocates for their species.
- Isha the red panda from Mogo Zoo in Australia arrived in the hopes of establishing a new breeding pair with Amy, another recent arrival.
- For the first time in our history, Wellington Zoo has tarantulas. 43 tarantulas, of various different species including Goliath bird eater and Chilean rose came to the Zoo from the Czech Republic. 13 of these spiders have now gone to Auckland Zoo.
- An additional female porcupine came into the collection in the hopes of establishing a breeding pair, Onion and Nyack have since been spotted mating.
Breeding and Growing
- Our most remarkable breeding success was the birth of Malayan sun bear cub, Sasa, born in September 2006. Wellington Zoo remains the only Zoo in Australasia that has successfully bred sun bears. The birth of Sasa, proved the success of an unusual operation performed on Sean, our male sun bear, by Zoo veterinary staff with assistance from Massey University last year which allowed him to mate successfully.
- A total of five kaka chicks were born at Wellington Zoo, the first time kaka have hatched and survived at the Zoo.
- Three Otago skinks, one of New Zealand’s rarest lizards were born in February. Otago skinks are part of a Department of Conservation recovery programme so these lizards may go elsewhere to breed, or may even be released.
- The two servals that arrived last year have had two litters, the first three kittens were born in September 2006, and the second litter were born in December.
- A number of birds were hatched at the Zoo this year – an emu chick, an emerald dove chick, five banded rail chicks and golden and monal pheasants.