Ostrava Zoo Review

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Today, I did Ostrava Zoo. I will not be doing an exhibit by exhibit 50 million word review but I will be generally discussing the zoo – the good points, bad points and my general opinions. Ostrava Zoo is located in Ostrava (obviously) which is a city in the Czech Republic and fairly near to the Polish border. I’m going to be honest here and say that Ostrava is really quite a depressing city, it is an industrial city and the skyline is covered with the towers of factories, some are shut-down and rusting and some are still bellowing smoke. There used to be lots of coal mining going on around the city (though this has stopped now, I believe completely) and as a result there are lots of huge slag heaps and old railways for transporting coal into the factories that do whatever they do with coal (refineries?). There isn’t any beautiful architecture in the city but just fit-for-purpose buildings. It’s not a tourist town or a pretty town (apart from the river) by any means, but it is an industrial city and that is what you get with an industrial city so if you go in expecting one then it meets your expectations.



The zoo is on the edge of the city, just as you start to get into the countryside but still in the city. It isn’t a huge zoo and I did it completely in 5 hours, although the ‘evolution pavilion’ was closed, if it was open and you went at a leisurely relaxed pace you wouldn’t need more than 6 hours to see everything to your satisfaction.



(As I go around a zoo I make bullet point notes in a note book of whatever comes into my head at certain points so what I have done here is grouped those notes and expanded on them)



General Notes and Observations:



- I really liked Ostrava Zoo. I thought it was fantastic overall and it lands itself in my top five zoos (disclaimer: I don’t actually have a numbered list of zoos but I have been to over 50 and Ostrava Zoo is better than at least 45 of them). I liked the overall feel of the zoo with the setting in a woodland environment, lovely enclosures (with exceptions, the big cats being very notable on this front) and landscaping but also the way the zoo was organised. With the exception of the big cats and the primates, it was all organised geographically and this gave a really nice feel – there was no bird house or aquarium or reptile house but everything was geographical, for example the Papua house had birds, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish and saltwater fish together.



- ALL heated houses had hot air blowing things to dry out the lenses of cameras (or glasses) so they didn’t get misted up and there were around 10 different heated houses and there was not a single one that didn’t have one. This really impressed me to be honest because I have seen them before but I’ve never seen a zoo with so many heated houses have one in each, I wish other zoos would take note.



- Today there was a lot of construction going on, the main car park was being re-surfaced so we had to use the overflow car park and the gift shop was being (re?) built (it was nearly done). I actually thing it is good that a zoo is doing good maintenance and expanding.



- Attached to Ostrava Zoo is a Botanical Garden, I had a little look around there and I’m sure that for a lover of plants then I would be great. It looked quite nice but all around the zoo was nice landscaping with signs for the plants so it was all very nice. (Note that when I said it takes less than 6 hours to go around the zoo thoroughly, I am not including the botanical garden)



- There was a big new construction going on in Ostrava Zoo that I think when done will be fantastic. It is the ‘Evolution Pavilion’ (I have a feeling that it was there before but is just being added to, does anyone know how much it is changing?) and the building was completely done with only finishing off the interior to do. Looking through the widows, there were lots of interesting looking exhibits with tropical plants, tanks, aviaries and more. Attached to this is a large area that is glass walls with netting (very tall) over the top and signs saying that chimpanzees would be coming. Inside was just grass but I assume that some climbing equipment and other things will be added before chimps arrive. On the doors of the ‘Evolution Pavilion’ was a sign saying that it would “open in the course of the year” (Note that it wasn’t called ‘Evolution Pavilion’ but was written in Czech as something that looks like the words evolution pavilion with slightly different letters). I really think that this will be good when it is done and it looked like it would be finished around summer time.



The Bits That I thought were bad (not the mediocre things that could be improved but the downright bad)



- The absolute worst bit of the zoo was the big cat building. It was quite frankly terrible. It is a rectangular building that has cages along one of its walls with outdoor and indoor sections. Getting to this building from the gate (as I did and probably all visitors would for the first time), the first thing you see is the cage for the amur tigers. This is far, far too small and there is no enrichment at all (there are some popped balls and some logs but this is just superficial). The sides are metal bars that are the colour of rust and the ground is just sand. There are some ledges that the tigers can get up on but this isn’t enough. There are two tigers in separate sections that could be connected but weren’t when I was there. Next is a very similar cage for a sri-lankan leopard and the zoo has done its best for both of these in terms of adding the logs and branches but the cage itself is too small. Then is a cage for binturong which is possibly acceptable because there is climbing space but again, the area is too small. Then is the only enclosure that I would consider fully acceptable which is for Indian-crested porcupine. This is an area larger than that given to each tiger but for porcupines is fine (purely because of the size of the animal, I’m not suggesting that it is ok for porcupines to be in very small cages but tigers not) and has similar logs, substrate and little ledges for them to hide under. There is also a fake-rock covered house that has a glass viewing window to the public so that the porcupines can be seen asleep. Next is another far too small cage for a pair of indian lions (I personally don’t think it is acceptable to keep lions in a pair anyway because they are pride animals). This has various ledges that they can sit on but it is too small, there is a small grassy area that was signed for lions as well but the lions couldn’t access it when I was there and even if they could, I think that the overall area would be too small. Inside the building were the indoor areas for these species, these were also too small (apart from the binturong’s which I thought was OK) and under-furnished but the porcupines and tigers didn’t have an indoor space and instead was an extra space for the Sri-lankan leopard which had an additional animal that was confined indoors today and also a too small but not so bad enclosure for a rusty-spotted cat. Overall, I think that the whole house needs to be demolished and the whole area turned into the enclosure for one of the big cat species. Even then it would be only adequately sized. Next to this building were a couple of enclosures for fishing cats which were fine, not bad but nothing unusual about them.

This is the only bit that I thought was really bad and everything else was mediocre to good



The bits that I thought were mediocre:



- The Africa building. This was a large shed type building surrounded on all sides by paddocks which used the building as an indoor area. There was nothing wrong with any of this but nothing particularly worthy of note. Species were: Rotshchild’s Giraffe, Eland, Grevy’s zebra, beisa oryx, marabou stork, sacred ibis, southern ground hornbill and grey crowned cranes.



- The primate house. This is the only other taxonomically themed section (the other being the big cat house), there were some very nice species including blue-eyed black lemurs but the enclosures themselves were pretty standard. In the middle of the monkey house though was a glass-walled aviary called ‘Madagascar’ with Madagascan birds in it and I thought this was a very attractive exhibit with lots of nice plants and water features and also good for the birds



- The elephants. This exhibit was fine, possibly a bit small but I thought it was fine, nothing unusual. Inside though was a nice aviary with some nice Asian birds and turtles in a very attractive planted aviary with a pond, of course matching the geographical theming with the Asian elephants.



The Bits I thought were Good:

Most things are here:



- First impressions. The entrance is a very modern looking building shaped like a hippo’s head which is the zoo’s logo. The first thing you see on entrance is a nice but not particularly unusual pond for Caribbean flamingos. This pond is shared with a big group of white-faced whistling ducks and a couple of Orinoco geese.



- ‘Little Amazon’. This is a small tropical house ( actually more like a room) that is done up fantastically with tropical plants and in it has some fish tanks, a tank with dart frogs, tarantulas and cotton-top tamarins. All fish and herps of course being south American species.



- ‘Papua’. A fantastic exhibit in my opinion. First is an outdoor aviary with pheasant pigeons, masked lapwings, pied imperial pigeons, southern crowned pigeons, black-capped lories and rainbow lorikeets. Through this aviary it leads into an inside building that various large tanks. These have turtles, monitors, freshwater fish and saltwater fish all native species to Papua/Australasia of course.

- Dotted around were various large free flight aviaries for bird of prey including four for lammergeirs, these were all nice and large and well decorated.



- ‘Chitwan’. This is a large Himalayan species exhibit based around a huge forested area that was a mixed species enclosure for hanuman langurs and Asiatic black bears. I found this mixture of predator and prey very interesting though with such a large area I guess they can avoid each other. There is also another mixed species enclosure with Asian short clawed otters and binturongs. It was a good size with a nice pond and rock work for the otters and climbing areas above for the binturongs. There is also a building that allows guests to look over the large wooded area for hanuman langurs and bears and in it are some tanks with fish from that approximate area of Asia (including clown knife fish)



- ‘Tanganyika’- This is a large building where the hippos are. The inside area is slightly small but there is an outside area that is adequately sized. Inside the building is also a nice sized enclosure for two slender-snouted crocodiles and there is also a large tank with Tanganyikan cichlids. The inside is very nicely planted with tropical plants.



- ‘Chinese Garden’ – This was my favourite part of the zoo and it was various large aviaries for Chinese birds and all of it was beautifully landscaped in a rockery-type way with some small streams and lovely plants. The aviaries were black stork (open topped), smew and mandarin duck mix (open topped), white-naped crane (open topped), red-billed chough and Himalayan monal pheasant mixed (walk-thorugh), white-eared pheasant and red-billed magpie mixed, Chinese bamboo partridge and temminck’s tragopan mixed, spotted dove and grey peacock-pheasant mixed, white-necklaced partridge and azure-winged magpie mixed (walk-through), great eagle owl and next to this were paddocks for Pere David’s deer and Altai wapiti.



- Surrounding woodlands- All around the zoo are nice woodlands with paths through them and some streams and lakes. I saw some wild deer and quite a few different wild birds. There is also a hide which suggests that some interesting species of birds must come sometimes.

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