Growing a Zoo: A Horticulture Internship: World Class Zoo

New Butterfly Garden

Zoo Negara has a goal to be considered a world class zoo by 2015, and this last year has had some of the most changes to the zoo grounds. The changes include building the new panda exhibit, a new walk-in butterfly enclosure, new bear enclosures, a new elephant enclosure, a new small mammal area, new primate areas, and completely updated landscaping and facades for a fresh new look. The zoo will really have a completely different layout and look by the time all the construction and maintenance is done.

Re-landscaping and Replacing Roof

I spoke with a very enthusiastic man, who works in the main office and takes part in the creation of new concepts for the zoo grounds, about what they hope to accomplish in this remodeling. Being an ecologist himself, his concept is to split the zoo areas up by ecosystems and really bring in hardscaping and plants that thrive in those areas, to make the animal exhibits closely resemble natural habitats. In the new exhibits that are close to being finished, or in the areas already finished, you can really see the incorporation of the plants into their mini ecosystems. One area that is already done and an exemplary example of this incorporation, is Zoo Negara’s aquarium. Honestly the aquarium is probably the last place I would have thought about the integration of native plants, mostly because I think underwater plants and the first thing that comes to mind is seaweed follow by things in the animal kingdom that are mistaken for underwater plants. How the aquarium uses plants isn’t limited to plants that grow completely submerged though. They have set up some of the aquarium tanks to be half filled and used aquatic plants to emulate swamp areas and wetlands. It’s kind of like those ant farms that look like a cross section and let you view the different layers.

New Guard Rails

New Landscape Area Outside Entrance

During my internship, the remodeling has been happening throughout the grounds. The amount of progress made and different projects started has been impressive. I wish I had before and after photos to show how dramatic some of the landscaping changes have been, but more often than not I’m assisting with something else when a project is started and don’t see it until well into the changes. They have replaced older railings, repainted many of the buildings and structures, redone roofing, taken out entire areas of landscaping for new designs, and started maintenance on the river bed that traverses through the zoo grounds. Much of what I have been involved in, during the remodeling, has revolved around the replanting/care of the flora taken out of landscaping and supervision of the river bed maintenance. The amount of plants removed due to re-landscaping has been impressive. Ain and I spent an entire day just potting bulbs that had been removed! It’s a good thing we weren’t the only people working or taking care of the removed landscaping, or it would have been at least a week of work! The river bed work has also been pretty interesting. Overgrown vegetation that has been obstructing views of exhibits or affecting the structural integrity of the retaining walls were removed and the construction of new support walls have been underway in areas missing them.