AUCKLAND CITY COUNCIL
MEDIA RELEASE

10 August 2007

Zoo's revolutionary new vet centre opens to visitors

Auckland Zoo's new veterinary centre, the New Zealand Centre for Conservation Medicine (NZCCM), will open to visitors today following an official opening ceremony with Prime Minister Helen Clark.

The 890m2, 32-room state-of-the-art facility, the first national centre for conservation medicine in the world, is the culmination of a six-year project incorporating a highly successful $4.6m fundraising campaign by the Auckland Zoo Charitable Trust under the leadership of trust chair, Penny Whiting, MBE.

Ms Whiting says it is fantastic to see the zoo’s team working in the new facility. “The trustees and I are delighted that, thanks to the support we received from so many organisations and individuals (including our major sponsor, the ASB Community Trust), the dream for this world-class centre has been realised. It is providing New Zealand with a vitally important resource. The work that the team undertakes will make a substantial contribution to wildlife conservation in New Zealand and around the globe."

Having successfully completed the NZCCM project, the trust will now be focusing its energies on a $7m fundraising campaign for the zoo's next major project, Te Wao Nui, which Auckland Zoo is creating in partnership with Ngati Whatua o Orakei. Auckland City Council has already committed $9m to this $16.2m development – a complete flora, fauna and cultural experience of New Zealand, which is due to open at the zoo by early 2010.

As well as pioneering conservation medicine in New Zealand – a 21st century approach to wildlife health that focuses on the connections between human health, animals and the environment – the NZCCM is offering visitors an exciting chance to experience the centre’s work first-hand.

Visitors can watch staff at work in the laboratory, treatment room, and operating theatre from a large public viewing gallery. Cameras above the operating tables have the capacity to display medical work onto a large screen in the gallery, which serves as an excellent educational and observational tool. The gallery also features dynamic interactive displays – including the chance to listen to and compare animal and human heartbeats, check out medical equipment, parasites, animal embryos, and even the preserved testes of the zoo's castrated hippo, Fudge!

"What's exciting is that in opening our doors we are also going to be opening people's eyes and minds to what conservation medicine is all about," says Auckland Zoo senior vet and NZCCM project leader, Dr Richard Jakob-Hoff.

"Today, 75 per cent of newly emerging human diseases, like Bird Flu and SARS, are being shown to have an animal origin. In New Zealand, diseases are affecting some of our own most endangered native species - like the hihi, Archey's frog, Hooker's sealion, saddleback, and yellow-eyed penguin.

"Conservation medicine recognises that we're all connected to each other and to nature, and that by working collaboratively we can be part of the solution to the human-induced environmental problems and wildlife crises we are facing."

The NZCCM, along with serving the zoo's animals, will be focused on wildlife health, research, diagnostic work (particularly avian and reptile diagnosis), and specialised teaching, as well as furthering collaboration with DOC, Biosecurity New Zealand, Massey University and many other organisations It will see the zoo progress its current roles in national biosecurity and native species conservation - including programmes for animals such as Archey's frog, the Campbell Island teal, yellow-eyed penguin, kiwi, tuatara, hihi, saddleback, whitehead, kakapo, and exotic species like the Seychelles white-eye and Japan’s Tsushima leopard cat.

The new centre is also enabling the zoo to set up its first post-graduate residency in Conservation Medicine. Jointly funded by Auckland Zoo and James Cook University in Queensland, with the collaboration of DOC and the University of Otago, it includes a PhD study of disease of native frogs by first resident, Dr Stephanie Shaw.

"Frogs are a vital indicator of the health of the environment. There is currently a global amphibian crisis, and several frogs have become extinct due to a chytrid fungus infection now found in New Zealand. More recently, there has been a major population crash in Archey's frog in the Coromandel. Dr Shaw's work will be of great value in enabling us to develop a disease risk management strategy for all our unique native frogs,” says Dr Jakob-Hoff.

ENDS

Notes to editors

Conservation medicine
Conservation medicine is a relatively new scientific discipline that addresses the connections between human health with the health of animals and the environment.

Human-induced changes in the environment, such as deforestation, pollution and intensive agriculture, along the global movement or people and their animals and products, are the biggest threats to the spread of disease and the emergence of new diseases.

“We need to look at the root causes of disease so that we can work out ways of managing them, and reversing the processes that cause them. This requires a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional approach like conservation medicine, and this is what we will be doing at the NZCCM, “says Auckland Zoo senior vet, and NZCCM project leader, Dr Richard Jakob-Hoff.

The NZCCM already works with a wide range of organizations, and this will continue to grow. Currently the NZCCM collaborates with: Department of Conservation (DOC), Biosecurity New Zealand and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Landcare Research, ESR (Environmental Science and Research), universities, diagnostic laboratories, other vets, environmental scientists (in New Zealand and overseas), public health doctors, local iwi, local authorities, and individual environmental groups.

Major donors to the NZCCM
The ASB Community Trust, has funded a third of the new centre’s cost, with total grants worth $1.5m from the Auckland Zoological Park Charitable Trust, The Lottery Environment and Heritage, The Lion Foundation, and The Southern Trust.

Other major supporters: Castle Trust, Skycity Community Trust, Portage Trust through the Trusts Charitable Foundation, Pub Charity, Mt Wellington Trust, Perry Foundation, Mazda Foundation, and Trustees Executors.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

The NZCCM building: 890m2, and 32 rooms, including diagnostic and research laboratory, treatment room, operating theatre, diagnostic imaging room (x-ray and ultra-sound) intensive care unit, recovery room, necropsy suite, library, lecture theatre, outdoor isolation yards, tank room, sterilising room, and public viewing gallery.

In addition there is a separate high security Quarantine Building, located adjacent to the new NZCCM.

Interactive activities for visitors

Surgery station: At selected times, and with the supervision of vet staff, visitors will get the chance to play vet - by sewing up a chamois (wild goat), to simulate real surgery. Grown-ups and kids can learn to tie a surgeon's knot, use microscopes to check out the likes of parasites and other tiny specimens, and put their CSI skills to the test by examining the hairs of different animals. They can check out animal bones, and other vet-related equipment and objects.

Displays: Via recordings, visitors can listen and compare heartbeats of different animals to that of a human. Three exploratory animal cabinets contain a diverse range of specimens and medical veterinary equipment , including post-mortem and parasite specimens.

Computer screens (for the laboratory, treatment room, and operating theatre) are also to be introduced in the near future, providing opportunity to find out more about activities in these three specific areas.

State-of-the-art technology

- A cryo freezer enables the NZCCM to hold a "frozen zoo”, preserving the blood and tissue of endangered species for future research and diagnostic work. This also provides facility for storing of sperm and eggs for future artificial breeding projects.

- Audio-visual equipment to film and record our operations - a great teaching tool.

- An imaging room: with x-ray equipment and ultra-sound. The latter enables easy pregnancy diagnosis and doing other diagnoses to be done in non-invasive manner.

- Biochemistry analyser that enables NZCCM team to do own blood testing.

- State-of-the-art microscopes.

- Adjustable operating tables (including a large operating table - big enough to fit a zebra)

Eco-friendly building
Every effort has been made to make the NZCCM a green operation. Materials are all recyclable; the building maximises natural light, and – except where temperature control is required – uses natural ventilation.

Three large water tanks collect rainwater from the roof - to supply water for all cleaning, as well as supplying water to the zoo's exotic birds section. Solar panels on the roof provide water heating.

The building is shaped to allow minimisation of energy use; south facing lantern roofs allow natural light to the building without problems of direct sun and heat gain. Internal courtyards projecting deep into the building, provide natural light - reducing need for artificial lighting, and maximising use of natural ventilation. A high degree of thermal insulation has also been built into external walls and roof to improve building fabric.

Medicinal plants
All but one plant in the centre's landscaping has a medicinal property - traditionally used by Maori.

Catering for diverse “clients”
Animal holding areas consist of eight outdoor and indoor animal wards. Wards contain under-floor heating. In addition there is a multi-purpose ward, with pool for aquatic animals. The largest animal that can be treated within the centre is a zebra.

Operational for just over a month, the centre has had no shortage of animals through its doors. These have included an injured takahe and little spotted kiwi from Tiritiri Matangi Island, an otter from Franklin Zoo, and zoo animals - a golden lion tamarin, bellbird, blue and gold macaws, rabbits, chameleon, porcupine (in quarantine) and serval.

Recent projects
Technical advice

- Revising DOC's protocols for blood and feather sampling of native birds

- Developing health protocols for DOC for South Island's Otago and Grand skinks

Research

- Analysis of security risk of avian disease vectors (sub-contract to Landcare Research for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

- Quarantine containment for study of avian malaria in saddlebacks for Landcare Research

Teaching

- Training of a Seychelles vet in field diagnostic sampling techniques (health screening) for the Island Conservation Society (Seychelles) - to assist with the island to island transfer of the endangered Seychelles white-eye. Within days of leaving the NZCCM, Dr Lindy MacGregor was in the field applying her new skills, during which time she identified a previously un-described blood parasite. This is an example of how knowledge and skills developed in New Zealand can benefit wildlife in other parts of the world.

Conservation

- Medical and surgical care of an injured takahe and a little spotted kiwi - both from Tiritiri Matangi Island.

- Quarantine and health screening of 11 kokako being re-located from Tiritiri Matangi to Mokoia Island, and the Hunua Ranges.

- Health screening of hihi (stitchbird) transferred from Tiritiri Matangi to Waitakere Ranges.

- Review of pathology in native frogs.

Upcoming activities
NZCCM staff will be involved in many new teaching and research projects including:

- collaboration with population health specialists on research into wildlife diseases of significance to people

- the training of pathologists in the identification of avian blood parasites for Biosecurity New Zealand

- fieldwork - including a trip to Whenua Hou (Codfish Island) later this month (August) to carry out health checks on island's critically endangered kakapo population

- in late November, the NZCCM will host the annual conference of the NZ Vet Association's Wildlife Society - focusing on native wildlife and disease, which is already attracting the interest of wildlife vets from all over New Zealand, as well as from Japan, Canada and the USA.

ENDS

ABOUT AUCKLAND ZOO
Auckland Zoo is an enterprise of Auckland City Council. It is home to the largest collection of native and exotic wildlife species in New Zealand (over 1900 animals and 200 species) and attracts over half a million visitors annually. It is becoming increasingly well known nationally and internationally through the award-winning television programme, 'The Zoo'. At the heart of all Auckland Zoo's work and activities is its mission: "to focus the Zoo’s resources to benefit conservation and provide exciting visitor experiences which inspire and empower people to take positive action for wildlife and the environment". Auckland Zoo is a member of both the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks & Aquaria (ARAZPA) and the World Association of Zoos & Aquariums (WAZA).

ABOUT AUCKLAND ZOOLOGICAL PARK CHARITABLE TRUST
The Auckland Zoological Park Charitable Trust is an independent trust and was originally established on 18 September 1992 to assist in meeting objectives to ensure Auckland Zoo’s survival for future generations. The charitable trust now has the capability to raise funds and support other organisations with New Zealand that have similar objectives. The Zoo Trust administers all donations and bequests which may be put towards major capital development projects, conservation and breeding projects for threatened native and exotic species, wildlife research, education and training in wildlife health. All trustees are volunteers and have proven skills in management, law, accounting, trusts, and fundraising.

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