Caption: Up close personal experience at Chimelong zoo.
By MATTHEW VARI
Sunday, December 21, 2014 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)
THE new Adventure Park Zoo under construction is set to welcome the first of its tenants of the African orient towards the end of next year.
Speaking to the media at a conference on Thursday, Member for Moresby South and Minister for Sports and National Events Justin Tkatchenko also revealed that as a gift to the people of PNG from China- the animals that will be brought over will be owned by the zoo for the people of the country to get up close and personal with the African animals.
He said for donating the PNG iconic species of bird of paradise and tree kangaroos to Chimelong Zoo in Guangzhou province China have come forward to donate some animals for the new zoo at the adventure park.
“This new zoo will be for our Papua New Guinean children and adults as well to experience animals like giraffes, zebras, flamingos, antelopes, tigers, and bears- we are going to have quite a collection of exotic animals come to Papua New Guinea,” Mr Tkatchenko said.
“This is going to take a bit of challenge because we are going to work through quarantine, through the Department of Environment and Conservation to ensure that all aspects are covered when importing in these exotic animals in PNG.”
“I want to see the face of a young Papua New Guinean child when he finally sees how big a giraffe is, or if he finally sees a zebra, tiger, that he has only seen in a book, on the internet, or on television.”
Minister Tkatchenko also expressed his sincere thanks to the Minister for Environment and Conservation John Pundari, the Secretary.
“With the animals coming from China they are all African Orientated, because those animals will be able to put up with our heat, weather and out conditions, so we must have animals that can thrive and breed and feel comfortable in our hot humid conditions in Port Moresby.”
“With that deal is that they are actually donating these animals to us, they are giving it as a gift from Chimelong in China.”
“With that they will also bring their expert trainers and keepers who will help to train look after these animals and train our Papua New Guineans all the techniques in feeding and maintaining and looking after these animals.”
Tkatchenko added that negotiations are ongoing on how the zoo is to be managed as it is a big project.
He added that the biggest hurdler in the progress of the zoo was not so much the infrastructure development, but that of quarantine.
“Quarantine (NAQIA) have been very honest and have said that they have never done anything like this before in for a long time,” the Minister said.
“We have never brought in all this exotic animals, but if you wind back the clock about 20 or 30 years Circus Bruno came to town and brought elephants tigers, monkeys’ giraffes and a big python,” he recalled.
“They were based out of Moitaka- what happened was that the circus went bankrupt and the man fled the country and left all these animals to die.”
“That was a very bad experience, so after that the government had never allowed any of these exotic animals back into the country because of that.”
He said that now they were working with quarantine and a new generation of management and staffing to work the processes on how get the animals in and quarantining them so they do not carry sicknesses to the rest of the birds and animals in the country.
Australia is also assisting because Australian Quarantine is very strict and they can assist us in the process of bringing these animals here and getting them quarantined.
The second step is the development of the zoo which will have a master plan where we will get all the right size cages and materials- the right kind of fencing, the right kind of facilities that the animal needs.
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