Duisburg Zoo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Zoo Duisburg | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 51°26′07″N 6°48′19″E / 51.43528°N 6.80528°E | |
| Date opened | 1934 |
| Location | Mülheimer Straße 273,47058 Duisburg |
| Land area | 15.5 hectares |
| No. of animals | ca. 2130 |
| No. of species | 280 |
| Major exhibits | Koalas, Fossas |
| Website | http://www.zoo-duisburg.de |
The Duisburg Zoo, founded on 12 May 1934, is one of the largest zoological gardens in Germany. It is especially well known for its dolphinarium and, since 1994, for breeding koalas.
Far less well known are the breeding successes in other areas, for example, with fossas (carnivorous mammals from Madagascar) and red river hogs.
The zoo is located in the northern part of the Duisburg urban forest on the border with Mülheim on the Ruhr. Federal highway A 3 divides the zoo into western and an eastern parts, which are joined by a leafy country bridge. The highway is scarcely noticeable to the visitors.
The Duisburg Zoo was founded in 1934 as the Duisburg-Hamborner Tierpark am Kaiserberg. In 1936, the zoo began to grow from a small animal park with its first (loaned) elephant.
With the beginning of World War II in 1939, the zoo had to be closed. Only in 1946 was the zoo re-opened with animals loaned from the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich. In 1952, the zoo could register the acquisition of its first elephant. In 1958, a facility for penguins and seals was dedicated by businessman and promoter Helmut Horten. In 1965, one of Europe's largest dolphinariums was opened in a newly developed area. Research into the behavior of dolphins increased the zoo's prestige, but also drew sharp criticism, since even the generously dimensioned dolphinarium only managed to offer a small fraction of the space available to a dolphin in its natural habitat.
Director Wolfgang Gewalt drew similarly vehement criticism for leading an expedition to supply the zoo with a white whale. In the summer of 2004, the beluga Ferdinand and the Commerson's dolphin Yogi, the last animals of their kind in Duisburg, were flown to SeaWorld in San Diego, California, where they are spending their twilight years in species-appropriate tanks with their others of their kind. Amazingly, the animals, which are the oldest of their kind known, appear to have tolerated the move well.
In 1970, the animal park renamed itself a "zoo" and marked 1978 with the birth of its first dolphin. Besides the construction of a house for kodiak bears (1982), big cats (1985), koalas (1994) and an outdoor facility for gorillas among other things, a city partnership between Duisburg and Wuhan was dedicated with the construction of a Chinese garden complete with fauna. The Duisburg Zoo celebrated its 70 years of existence in May 2004. In recent years, the zoo made efforts to renovate its antiquated enclosures, which caused many species, for example the polar bears, to be given up; there remain facilities which do not meet contemporary standards. Since September 2005, a new facility for the two river dolphins, dubbed the “Rio Negro”, has opened. One of the dolphins died a short time later; the other one died in December 2020.
