AKRON, Ohio – In case you’ve visited the Akron Zoo lately, you may need seen the development of a big constructing outdoors the Lehner Household Zoo Gardens. The brand new constructing, Backyard View Place, will function a versatile housing house to permit the zoo to offer enhanced take care of its animals.
The $2 million constructing has been below development for greater than a 12 months and is predicted to open in February, in accordance with Eric Albers, the zoo’s curator of animal operations. The constructing will present a quiet house for animal residents in all kinds of circumstances, corresponding to habitat development or restore, being pregnant, damage, sickness, seasonal lodging and quarantine. The house also can present a everlasting house for the zoo’s geriatric animals who want an area simply accessible for the zoo’s veterinarians.
“The objective is to provide a quiet, secluded house for animals that want extra direct care,” Albers stated. “And it permits us to deal with the animals as they become older. Geriatric animals typically want extra remedy, and they are going to be in a greater house with extra room. If you find yourself speaking about caring for animals by their life, it is probably not acceptable to have them out on habitat anymore however they’re nonetheless high-quality. We wish to get them right into a location that’s extra for them, it’s type of like a nursing house.”
Although the constructing gained’t be open to zoo guests, Backyard View Place will characteristic a chook habitat viewable from the skin of the constructing, dealing with the gardens.
Backyard View Place at-a-glance
The two,000-square-foot constructing is split into a number of areas to offer the very best take care of animals in want, in accordance with the zoo.
It options:
- Two hoof inventory stalls (one with a heated flooring)
- Two outside paddocks
- Three multi-species areas with indoor areas and outside areas with swimming pools
- A workspace for zoo keepers
- A second flooring that homes the constructing’s heating, air flow and air-con system and doubles as a space for storing
The zoo doesn’t at present have plans to maneuver any particular animals to the brand new constructing. However having the house obtainable will enable the zoo to maneuver animals there shortly, if a necessity arises.
Final April, the zoo needed to quarantine some birds as a result of nationwide unfold of the extremely pathogenic avian influenza. With the completion of Backyard View Place, the zoo will have the ability to transfer prone avian species into the house sooner or later, if wanted.
“That’s the place the multi-species holdings turn into actually important for us. If we get into that scenario once more, now we’ve got three holding areas and if we have to we are able to use hoof inventory stalls for birds,” Albers stated. “However the multi-species areas are designed with swimming pools in them for geese or the rest that wants a pool and it offers us much more house to usher in any birds we have to.”
Since 2019, the zoo’s solely different house to deal with animals has been the Roger J. Sherman Middle for Animal Care. The opening of Backyard View Place will enable the zoo to satisfy up to date animal care requirements set by the Affiliation of Zoos and Aquariums.
“Over time, AZA at all times appears to be like to assessment its requirements to verify they’re acceptable, to see if they should change something like growing house sizes for particular species or sure circumstances. As they try this, the areas we’ve constructed – I feel the Sherman Middle addition was carried out round 20 years in the past, however that was constructed with requirements of that point. And now, whereas we are able to nonetheless use that house, including more room offers us extra room to have the ability to home animals off-habitat,” Albers stated.
“We’ve been trying to do that for years and at last had the chance and the situation to do it. Because the zoo grows, we want to have the ability to develop to assist the animals long run,” he stated.
Need extra Akron information? Sign up for cleveland.com’s Rubber City Update, an e mail e-newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Wednesdays.
