Taronga needs a thick hide as price of bringing in elephants soars

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Taronga needs a thick hide as price of bringing in elephants soars

Sydney Morning Herald

Matthew Moore

Freedom of Information Editor

August 12, 2006

 

CURBING the passions of a maturing male elephant will mean the cost of

Taronga Zoo's ambitious plan to anchor an Asian elephant-breeding program

climbs by about $6 million.

 

Auckland Zoo was originally going to take an adolescent male called Gung,

but last year shelved plans to take any of eight Thai elephants now bound

for Australia, leaving Taronga little option but to take the only male or

see its breeding plans evaporate.

 

The problem with bulls is musth, an annual stage when their testosterone

levels increase as much as 60-fold, and they get brave enough to take on the

biggest bull around.

 

In Mosman, where the 28-hectare zoo runs down a hillside to the harbour's

edge, managing a bull in musth requires planning, determination and money.

In response to a freedom of information request on the elephant program, the

zoo said it had allocated $6.8 million to build a special holding facility

for Gung, a portion of which will go to refurbishing the zoo's " elephant

temple " .

 

This money takes the total cost of elephant-related works at the zoo to just

over $50 million, $35.6 million of which goes to the Wild Asia facility,

which the elephants will share with other Asian species. The elephant

project is easily the biggest such program the zoo has attempted, but it

denies claims by critics it is a commercial rather than conservation

venture.

 

Either way, with total revenue from customers and sponsors at just $40

million a year, the zoo will be hoping the elephants are a huge drawcard.

 

Given the Federal Government's insistence that elephants, too, need offshore

processing, the project was always going to be costly. But it is the little

items that mount up.

 

There is $2490 for " de-nutting coconuts " on Cocos Islands where the

elephants, and their Thai mahouts or handlers, last week began three months

in quarantine. De-nutting coconuts, the zoo has explained, involves removing

dodgy coconuts from trees so they don't fall on a mahout's head.

 

Then there is the cost of these mahouts themselves. They are now eating

their share of a $100,000 pile of food, five times what it cost to feed the

elephants on Cocos Islands unless you include the $84,000 it cost to ship

the hay there.

 

Zoo staff arrived in the islands early last year when the animals were

originally due to land but opposition from animal rights groups here and in

Thailand caused lengthy delays, a blowout in the food and other bills with

the total cost for the Cocos Island stopover now $1.4 million.

 

Thai protesters stopped the elephants being loaded onto a Russian transport

aircraft and Taronga lost its $558,000 deposit. The airfreight bill is now

$2.17 million.

 

Permits, agreements and legal fees convincing the Administrative Appeals

Tribunal that Mosman was a reasonable place to breed elephants cost $1.2

million, just less than the $1.6 million spent flying mahouts to Australia,

hosting a Thai delegation and building the Thais a quarantine facility.

 

Just to shift Taronga's two older elephants to their retirement home at

Dubbo Zoo cost $24,000 plus another $1.1 million for a new facility there.

 

Latest estimates of the total cost to get the five elephants to the Taronga

Zoo gates, excluding all the works there, is $7.2 million.

 

No wonder the zoo's director, Guy Cooper, has sent letters to friends of the

zoo, appealing for donations to help fund his new charges.

 

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