Belgrade Trip – Belgrade Zoo, Visitor Behaviour and is There Sufficient Space?

Zoos have a problem, they can do great good in education, in breeding programmes and conservation efforts. But, they also have to ensure the well-being of the animals they are caring for, and there were some evident problems here. I remember going to a couple of zoos in China and was genuinely shocked by how visitors were feeding the animals any old rubbish they could find out of their bags, with no-one seeming to care. I particularly remember one bear begging for food, it all felt sub-optimal. Anyway, back to Belgrade and these goats (or whatever they are) were minding their own business when a visitor broke off a piece of branch from the hedge and starting feeding the animals. A zookeeper walked by and didn’t say anything, but I suspect this is common as there are signs not to touch the hedge and not to feed the animals.

This lion had it tough too. A series of visitors were banging to get her attention and then taking photos with their flash on. Again, there are signs saying no photos using flash, but they’re ignored. I visited on a rainy weekday in September, I can imagine that some animals must be suffering somewhat if this is repeated multiple times per day.

I was also wondering whether some of these animals had enough space. This was the size of the hippo enclosure, it doesn’t feel ideal for two hippos.

And the parrots didn’t seem overwhelmed with space either. In fairness to the zoo, TripAdvisor marks the zoo as “meets animal welfare guidelines” but the standards for this seem very low.

The zoo was first built in 1936 and there have been numerous efforts recently to progress a project to build a larger zoo on a new site in the city. I suspect they really need the space, they’ve welcoming over 400,000 visitors a year to this site and it’s really not very large. The zoo is getting a lot of negative reviews about their facilities, it seems inevitable that a new zoo will be opened at some stage, no doubt as soon as funding is sorted out.