GIRAFFES FOR ZOO

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1021, 11 July 1930, Page 12

GIRAFFES FOR ZOO

INQUIRIES BEING MADE FOR EXHIBITS

OTHER KINDS OFFERED A pair of giraffes forms part of an assortment of animals the Parks Committee of the City Council is inquiring about for addition to the Auckland Zoo. The Town Clerk. Mr. J. S. Brigham, said today that the committee had been conducting protracted negotiations with the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa for the purchase of animals. That institution was nowable to offer two giraffes, koodoos (a kind of striped antelope), sable antelopes, roan antelopes, blue wildebeest. Stanley cranes, African porcupines and South African weaver birds and finches. Most of the animals were to replace exhibits which had died here in recent years, said Mr. Brigham. It was about five years since Auckland saw a giraffe. One had been housed in the zoo but had died. It was now proposed to acquire a pair.

Should the committee decide to go ahead with the purchase, a number of formalities would have to be completed before the animals reached New Zealand, said Mr. Brigham. He supposed they would come here via Australia. Permits had to be obtained before the hunters could set off to catch the animals and certificates as to the freedom from disease of the exhibits were required by the South African Department of Agriculture. Then the Department of Agriculture in Australia would have to be satisfied. Finally the department in this Dominion would require certificates.

Mr. Brigham mentioned also that the Canadian National Parks had offered to present a pair of Rocky Mountains sheep and a pair of goats from thsame locality. They would be “caug \ up and brought down by the fall,” in Canadian phraseology.