APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) —  This week’s ‘March of the Penguins’ should be saluted. Nineteen penguins have been flown from Bristol in southwest England

Nineteen penguins have been flown from Bristol in southwest England to Tbilisi where they are being rehomed in order to build a new penguin population. A flood destroyed the zoo in 2015, killing half its animals including the penguins.

Other zoos around Europe have also been donating animals, Riga sent a tiger, bringing the Tbilisi Zoo’s animal population back up to strength.

It has been a regeneration programme that perhaps even Noah, with his ark, would be proud of. Less than two years ago, images flashed around the world of tigers drowned in mud, bears being shot by the security services and a hippo standing knee-deep in water in a central Tbilisi street.

Now the hippo called Begi, the focus of an elaborate rescue operation in 2015, is back in the zoo and visitors are able to see for themselves one of the world’s most famous animals.

The flash flood on June 14 2015 killed half the zoo’s animals. Tigers and exotic birds were drown in their cages; the security forces tracked and shot dead dozens of escaped animals. In total 300 animals died. The flood also killed 20 people, including one by an escaped tiger four days after the flood.

Tbilisi Zoo’s existence hasn’t been easy. Opened in 1927, at its peak in the 1970s the zoo housed 1,000 different species. In the 1990s, though, funds for the zoo dried up and visitor numbers collapsed. This was the difficult and impoverished post-Soviet era when the newly independent countries were more bankrupt than solvent. A report by the World Society for the Protection of Animals in 1993 said that half the animals had died of starvation of the cold in the previous two years.

Now, though, Tbilisi zoo has been patched together and plans to relocate out of the city are being considered once again. Its future looks brighter than ever.

This is the zoo which has survived starvation after the break up of the Soviet Union and risen from the mud and horror of the 2015 flash flood.

By James Kilner, The Editor, The Conway Bulletin

ENDS