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2 articles
1.
Kyiv Zoo, the largest in Ukraine (area
39,5 ha), is situated in the center of the city, and is of
great importance for education of citizens and guests of the
capital of Ukraine. The collection of animals consists of 2300
animals representing more than 300 species, 60 species of which
are
endangered and listed in IUCN Red Data Book and the Red Data
Book of Ukraine.
Kyiv Zoo visited annually by more
than 500 000 adults and children. Today zoo is going through the
reconstruction of old enclosures and building of new facilities,
which are urgent for providing proper conditions for the welfare
of animals.
Latest news:
X.) KYIV WILL HAVE MORE PARKS:
ForUm, February 26, 2008
<http://en.for-ua.com/news/2008/02/26/105308.html>
On
occasion of great football event –Euro-2012, parks and public
gardens will be renovated in Kyiv. In particular 49 parks and 84
public gardens will be renovated and numerous trees in hundred
streets of Kyiv will be treated.
Apart from reconstruction of green zones, new parks and gardens
are planned to be created. In particular, new parks will appear
in Striletska, Vasylkivska, Zakharovskaa Streets and in Peremoha
Avenue.
New York Times, by
Clifford J. Levy, December 22, 2009
2.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/europe/23kiev.html
Tatyana Shvets strode through the Kyiv Zoo recently as if it
were her own backyard, feeding scraps of bread to the bison (“Hello,
my dears!”), cooing to the storks (“Oh, you must be cold!”) and
lavishing love upon every creature in sight, as she has since
she first visited as a child half a century ago.
But
often enough, her glee turned to dismay.
The
camels’ corral was a mess, she insisted. The elephant was
scrawny. The hippopotamus seemed depressed. And the monkeys’
cramped accommodations?
“God, what a nightmare,” she said.
Ms.
Shvets chased after and berated zoo workers, making mental notes
about complaints that she would send to the zoo’s management.
There was a lot to write up.
The
Kyiv Zoo, it seems, has seen better days. Ukraine’s government
is in disarray and the political discord has been unrelenting —
and, yes, now even the lions and tigers and bears have been
drawn in.
The
zoo was expelled from the European Association of Zoos and
Aquaria in 2007 over poor conditions and mistreatment of animals.
Advocates and former workers maintained that a giraffe and other
animals died from the zoo’s ineptitude, and that money was
siphoned from the zoo’s budget through corrupt schemes.
The
zoo’s director was dismissed last year by Kyiv’s eccentric mayor,
Leonid M. Chernovetsky, after failing to find a mate for an
elephant — or so Mr. Chernovetsky said. The new director has
stirred an uproar among the staff for her supposedly tyrannical
ways, and in October, a brawl erupted among workers during a
celebration of the zoo’s centennial.
Lately, animal rights advocates, including Ms. Shvets, have
contended that the zoo’s distress has been orchestrated by top
city officials who want to sell the zoo’s choice urban real
estate to developers and move the animals to the suburbs. The
advocates call the strategy, “No animal, no problem,” a play on
Stalin’s infamous saying, “No person, no problem.”
“This is being done so there are less and less animals, and they
can make money from the land,” said Ms. Shvets, 60, a retired
government worker. “The authorities in Kyiv these days, all they
care about is money.”
The
troubles are not always immediately obvious. During a walk
around the zoo on a Saturday morning, the place seemed more
shabby than squalid, as if it once aspired to great-zoo status
but had fallen on hard times for lack of money and attention.
Still, advocates said the worst conditions were obscured behind
closed doors, and they have circulated photographs that they
said revealed how the animals were treated out of sight.
Many of the primates and bears are held in claustrophobic
quarters because the public enclosures are run-down, they said.
Construction was begun on a primate pavilion at great cost, then
abandoned last year. Workers tell visitors that most monkeys are
“under quarantine.”
“I
really cried when I went inside and saw the conditions for the
monkeys,” said Tamara Tarnawska, leader of SOS-Animals Kyiv. “It
was absolutely horrible. I felt ashamed to be human.” She said
the animals were crammed together in cages that were poorly
lighted and dirty.
The
zoo’s management disputed many of the criticisms, saying that
they were voiced by disgruntled former workers or outsiders with
no expertise. The zoo’s director, Svetlana Berzina, did
acknowledge that the zoo was in bad shape when she took over
last year. She said the previous management was incompetent and
had begun projects that were expensive, unnecessary and never
finished, like the primate pavilion.
Ms.
Berzina said she was replacing workers, spearheading renovations,
bringing in consultants and establishing a code of ethics.
“We
are consistently dealing with all these issues,” she said. “But
I think that you can understand that problems that accumulated
over decades cannot be resolved in a single year.”
“A
significant number of workers at the zoo clearly were not doing
their jobs, and many were simply drinking heavily on the job,”
she added. Ms. Berzina denied that there were plans to sell the
zoo’s land, and she called publicity over the fight at the zoo’s
celebration in October overblown, saying that it was provoked by
former workers.
City officials said they hoped to improve the zoo enough to have
it reinstated to the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria,
but the association said the zoo would have to wait at least
until 2012.
While conflicts over the zoo have been widely publicized, some
visitors said they did not see what all the fuss was about.
“Compared to other zoos I’ve been to, the animals live pretty
well here,” said Aleksei Nazarenko, 22. “There are all these
zoos that travel from city to city in Ukraine, and the animals
live pretty poorly there. Here, they seem O.K.”
But
Yelena Ryabova, 55, said she was worried that the zoo would be
relocated.
“They want to put it 40 kilometers away,” she said, referring to
the persistent rumors. (Forty kilometers is about 25 miles.)
“That is a long way to go.”
When Ms. Shvets overheard people saying that the animals seemed
fine, she shook her head. She said that in her many years of
coming to the zoo, things had never been so unsettling. During
Soviet times, the zoo’s facilities might have been relatively
spare, but the care was far better, she said.
Now,
she noted, signs were out of date, animals were mysteriously
missing and the zoo was pocked with deserted renovation sites.
And
then she stalked off to do some more snooping.
“Where is the hippopotamus?” she demanded of a worker, standing
at the edge of an empty outdoor enclosure.
“When the mayor gives us money for repairs, you can see the
hippopotamus,” the worker grumbled.
Ms.
Shvets located the forlorn animal in a small pen elsewhere.
“Good morning, my darling!” she said.
