The largest construction in the history of the zoo will bring rhinos to Plzeň

Plzeň - Fourteen pavilions, six new animal species including a rhinoceros and a giraffe, and significant enhancement of the environment are set to bring the largest construction project in the more than eighty-year history of the Plzeň Zoo. Thanks to a grant from the European Union, new exhibits of the African savanna, African rainforest, and Asian steppe are being created for 130 million crowns. Visitors could see them as early as next autumn, said zoo director Jiří Trávníček to ČTK today. He hopes that attractive animals and environments will increase the annual attendance from the current 400,000 to half a million people.
    The zoo continues to build new exhibits following its existing philosophy of the garden without fences and cages. Similar to the current outdoor exhibit for lions, the new rhinoceros enclosure will only be separated from visitors by a water ditch and an electric fence. In the ditch, with steep stone banks and a specially modified bottom, in which there will be about 1.5 meters of water, the rhinos will also swim. However, the animals will only be able to get in and out of the water at designated places with a gradual descent leading to the enclosure, explained the zoo's operational deputy Bohumil Souček.
    "When the rhinoceros swims outside, people will be about two to three meters away from it," he said. The ditch has separate sections for males and females. Another water ditch is being constructed for the Liberian pygmy hippopotamus, which the zoo will also keep for the first time in its history. Both rhinoceroses and hippos will also have heated pools in their pavilions. Gibbons and macaques will live on islands around the outdoor pool for the rhinoceroses.
    The zoo currently plans to acquire only a male rhinoceros, with a female to arrive later. Due to the new animals, keepers will need to learn how to care for them in other zoos. "We will be the only zoo in the Czech Republic that will keep Indian rhinoceroses, as currently there are none in any domestic zoos," added zoo spokesman Martin Vobruba. According to him, the zoo currently keeps 35 endangered species of animals for which rescue programs are documented, and after the completion of the exhibits, it will have 40.
    In addition to rhinoceroses and hippos, new constructions will also house giraffes, cheetahs, African wild pigs, and red pandas for the first time in the Plzeň Zoo. Camels, pelicans, macaques, and other species will receive new, more modern pavilions and higher-quality housing.
    Although the Plzeň Zoo has the richest collection of species and individuals in the Czech Republic, visitors primarily demand large, attractive animals. Therefore, the zoo decided on such a large project, due to which part of the garden is currently inaccessible to visitors. Builders will relocate about 10,000 cubic meters of earth and will use about 12,000 tons of stone for the water ditches. "The quarry in Pňovany, from where we are taking the stones, has even started blasting again for us; it hadn't done that before," noted one of the builders.