Auckland Zoo's animal budget - $3.2m on elephants, $120k on giant wetas

Tuesday, 23 May 2017

Anjalee arrived at Auckland Zoo in July 2015, as part of a programme that cost $3.2 million.

From enormous elephants to giant wetas, running one of New Zealand's top zoos requires an equally hefty budget.

Not including a multi-million dollar elephant deal, the Auckland Zoo has an annual allowance of $125,000 to spend on all animal movements.

The Auckland Zoo have just acquired Alonzo, the golden lion tamarin from Mogo Zoo in New South Wales

And with a focus on education and conservation, rather than entertainment, the zoo racks up even higher figures on being ecologically responsible.

The 95-year-old zoo forked out $120,000 over recent years for its giant weta programme, but it's most costly translocation in the past year has been an aquarium full of exotic fish.

The zoo spent $7000 on finding the right spider monkey with the right personality to match the group.

More than $20,000 ($19,200 excluding GST) was spent acquiring 1000 Australian rainbow fish for the new Strangely Beautiful Australia exhibition.

Kevin Buley, head of life sciences at Auckland Zoo, said the brightly coloured tropical fish proved to be the one of the most expensive translocations in recent times, but the least expensive on an individual basis, with the fish costing just $20 each.

Giant weta can reach around 70mm long and weighing up to 27g, and are one of the world's heaviest insects.

The most expensive individual award goes to Anjalee the 1.7-tonne Asian elephant.

The eight-year-old pachyderm from Sri Lanka moved in with housemate Burma in July 2015, as part of a $3.2 million elephant acquisition project.

The zoo's conservation work with the Archey's frog, cost about $483 per individual.

And from the very big to the ridiculously cute, Buley said a male golden lion tamarin, Alonzo, was one of the most expensive individual mammal imports in the year to date.

An estimated $5000 was spent on his transition from Mogo Zoo in New South Wales to Auckland - which included his food, crate, permits, quarantines and check-up costs.

And riding on the back of this fluffy little munchkin comes the hopes for the survival of his critically endangered species.

Once he has completed his post-import quarantine period, he'll be paired with a single female, Frida, already at the zoo and hopefully sire many cute baby tamarins.

But that's not the only stud looking to grace the Auckland Zoo this year.

A primate keeper just flew to Toronto Zoo to meet a potential new male breeding spider monkey - the trip cost $3000.

This was a necessity as spider monkeys have complex social hierarchies, so extra consideration was needed to make sure he would fit in with the rest of the group.

The successful scouting mission means that the transition will go ahead, at a total cost of $7000 to acquire the monkey.

'He will bring fresh genes to the regional Australasian spider monkey breeding programme which is essential to the long-term success of this initiative,' Buley said.

Additional projects include releasing native species back into the wild and have a total $1.5m price tag.

It comes in the form of staff hours and resources the Auckland Zoo contributes annually to national and international wildlife conservation.

Such projects include re-establishing giant weta on Hauraki Gulf islands.

The gentle giant, which can reach the size of the common sparrow, was once classed as a threatened species due to habitat loss and introduced mammalian predators.

But due to the large-scale breeding programme, more than 2000 giant weta have been released into the wild at a cost of about $120,000, or $40-$80 each, depending on the size of the individual.

Another programme aims to reduce the risk of extinction risk for Archey's frog, one of New Zealands four surviving frog species.

The zoo caught, translocated, quarantined, screened, sexed, bred and re-released a total of 60 frogs, at about $483 each - coming to a total of $29,000 for the whole programme.