Ragunan primate enclosure to be enlarged 3 hectares
Ragunan primate enclosure to be enlarged 3 hectares
Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Governor Sutiyoso agreed on Thursday to the planned expansion
of a primate center at Ragunan Zoo in South Jakarta.
The expansion will be funded by the Howletts and Port Lymphne
Animal Park Foundation of Britain.
The primate center's supervisor, Willie Smits, said the center
would be extended from 13.2 hectares to 16.2 hectares. The
extension will completed by the end of this month.
"There will be a three-hectare expansion, 1.5 hectares for the
orangutan cage and the remaining for the chimpanzee cage," Smits
told reporters after meeting Governor Sutiyoso at City Hall.
Smits, who was accompanied by the Howletts foundation director
Peter Hitchfield and Ragunan Zoo director Edy Sunarto, revealed
they would build caves and bridges and plant big trees within the
enclosures to make the primates feel at home.
Without mentioning the cost of the expansion, he said it would
be financed by the Howletts foundation, which has lent four male
gorillas to the center.
"The city will pay nothing. We've even contributed hundreds of
millions of rupiah to the city revenue office," Smits, who also
chairs the Gibbon Foundation, said.
He said the hundreds of millions of rupiah had been collected
from visitors to the center in the three months that it had been
opened to the public.
He hoped the number of visitors to the zoo could increase from
the current average of 90,000 people per day to 150,000 people
per day after the expansion.
Entrance to the primate center costs Rp 5,000, which is in
addition to the Rp 3,000 per adult and Rp 2,000 per child
entrance fee to the zoo.
The existing gorilla enclosure, which cost Rp 10 billion, was
provided by the Gibbon foundation, which was founded by animal
lover the late Mrs. Puck Schmutzer.
The center initially created controversy because the city
administration announced that it would allocate Rp 3 billion per
annum for the maintenance of the gorillas at a time when the city
was still suffering from the economic crisis. The allocation was
finally canceled because it was estimated that ticket sales would
generate enough funds to cover the maintenance.
Smits revealed that he planned to establish a gorilla family
in the center, for which purpose female gorillas would be brought
in. The center's four gorillas are all male, named Kihi, Kimbou,
Kijou and Kumao, and are reportedly between four years old and
six years old.
"But we have to build another cage for three gorillas as only
one gorilla can become 'head' of the female gorillas," he said.
He said the dominant gorilla had silver on his back. The other
three gorillas would be separated from him once the females were
brought into the center.
According to the book A Praise of Primates by Steve Bloom,
female gorillas reach reproductive age at nine years of age.
Gorillas can live up to fifty years of age.