Paris now has a "21st-century" zoo. After a six-year makeover, the zoo in the Parc de Vincennes reopens on Saturday 12 April. Its priorities are animal well-being and conservation and the animals' environment is as close to their natural habitat as possible, reports RFI.
The lemurs are leaping from branch to branch, Nero the lion is having a nap - awaiting his three lioness playmates - and the 16 giraffes - Europe’s largest grouping - are gradually exploring the delights of their enclosure.
“I’m very happy the giraffes have three times the space they had before and that we can have free flying birds in the aviary and in the greenhouse,” says Alexis Lécu, head vet with the Paris Zoo. “This is a real improvement for us.”
Slowly but surely the 80 year-old zoo is returning to life after a full 170-million-euro makeover.
Eighty per cent of the 1,000 animals are now settling in after sometimes long periods of acclimisation elsewhere. There are 170 species in total – 74 species of birds, 42 of mammals, 21 reptiles, 17 amphibians and 15 fish.
All have been bred in captivity. But the experience of coming to see them is radically different from that of a traditional zoo.
“This is a new zoo with a new concept,” says director Sophie Ferreira Le Morvan. “The visitor is immersed in the geographical area of the animals. The stars are the animals and the visitor is invited in the environment of the animals.”
There are limits to what a city zoo can reproduce, so there was no question of doing a full replicate of the savannah for the zebras and antelope or Antarctic conditions for the Humboldt penguins.
Instead the animals have been grouped by region of origin into five biozones: Madagascar, Patagonia, Guyana, Europe and Sahel-Sudan, with replica habitats for tropics, forests and grasslands.
Read more of this report from RFI.