2023-12-28 08:54:54

The annual balance for 2023 for Vienna’s Schönbrunn Zoo is doubly positive: both in terms of visitor numbers, at over two million, and in terms of breeding success. “According to the forecasts of most tourism experts, we did not expect to be able to return to the numbers from before the Covid-19 crisis so quickly,” said zoo director Stephan Hering-Hagenbeck happily.

The newly designed spectacled bear enclosure also contributed to the zoo’s great popularity, it said in a broadcast on Thursday. However, the breeding successes, of which there were particularly many in 2023, were highlighted. The renewed offspring of the orangutans was particularly pleasing. “Two young animals are now enriching the orangutan group and inspiring them as ambassadors for their species in the wild, which are threatened with extinction. We are the first zoo in the world to have succeeded in breeding crocodile-tailed tejus, Crocodilurus amazonicus,” Hering-Hagenbeck was quoted as saying .

There were first European breedings in Schönbrunn for the Pacific glowing jellyfish Pelagia panopyra and for the ctenophore Bolinopsis mikado, and for the first time in the history of the zoo there were two chicks for the king penguins. The foundation stone for breeding the highly endangered African elephant was laid with the introduction of a bull, it said.

81 Northern Batagur river turtles were bred in the stations set up by Schönbrunn Zoo in Bangladesh, thereby contributing to species conservation in the wild. 30 of these endangered reptiles were reintroduced to protected ponds in 2023.

With the support of the zoo, twice as many nest sponsorships for the European pond turtle in the Donau-Auen National Park will be completed in 2023 as in the previous year – this is an important contribution to the protection of the only native turtle species. As part of the EU-LIFE project to reintroduce the northern bald ibis, which the zoo has been running since 2021, 32 chicks that were hatched in Rosegg Zoo were raised and piloted for the first time to a new winter area in Andalusia by ultralight aircraft. Among other things, the result of a study led by Schönbrunn Zoo caused a stir in the professional world, which showed that young Wallace’s flying frogs probably camouflage themselves as feces to protect themselves from predators.

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