Orana Park -- Christchurch » Orana Wildlife Park

Orana Park -- Christchurch
07-10-2005

I visited here last month ( my third visit )

This park is out in the countryside , about 10 km from town . It is generally dead flat , except for mounds of shingle from the nearby river .
It originally started as NZs first "Drive through Lion safari park" and was basically that for the first few years . However , the visitors were doing foolish things and risking life and limb every day , so the drive through section was abandoned and the park turned into more of an open range zoo .

There is a good range of animals to see , and the enclosures are of a generous size and are generally compatible to the animals that are in them . There are no pits , bars etc that most good zoos are trying hard to replace as fast as they can . Alot of the grazing animals have several acre enclosures .
The african plains animals are arranged in a long strip , but other animals are not put into obvious geographic regions as in some zoos .

The best people that helped me out with information about the zoo are retired volunteers who help out at the zoo -- the keepers were busy with other tasks to do more than the daily talk/feed sessions

Although the zoo has over 1000 acres of land available , only a small amount of this is developed into the "zoo" This led me to remark about the Australasian Zoos elephant acquisition programme ( see other threads )
Orana has the space , but not the $$s , skills and enclosure to accept any elephants in the foreseeable future .

Orana Park is unusual in that it is primarily a transfer zoo for animals between zoos , while more permanent homes are being built . However , they have had breeding successes for themselves , notably cheetahs and kiwis ( but also rare geckos and tuataras ) Their main goal is for display and educational purposes -- I was very surprised to learn that !!

Although it is possible to walk around the zoo , there is a zoo mobile pulled by a tractor and the driver points out various features along the way .... but the zoo covers about 150 acres of accessibility --- too much for young children on a hot day .
There is a gift shop , a cafe , toilets , adventure playground , and dozens of pinic spots dotted around the park . The most noticable feature of this zoo ( as opposed to the other 3 main zoos in NZ ) is S P A C E ...... lots of it

The zoo is currently building a sumatran tiger enclosure , but this is in the early stages at this point of time .
Apart from the rhino/springbok exhibit , there are no other mixed species enclosures . The information staff couldnt figure out why any zoo would want to do so , and assured me that there was heaps of room at Orana Park .....
My guess is that it is similar to a 30 year old Monarto Zoo . Nothing of real outstanding nature ( either positive or negative ) but it is a pleasant zoo in its own right . It does not get any funding from the city council /local shires and has to rely on gate sales and donations/sponsorships . Fortunately as it is the only "zoo" of any size in the South Island , it has a high visitor rate