www.zoo-osnabrueck.de
City: Osnabrück
Country: Germany
State: Lower Saxony
Opend 1936
Species 300
This interesting zoo shows especially African and South American animals. The favorits of course also are here, like the elephants and great apes. It also has a small aquarium building
Open minimum 9am-5pm
Entrance fee
Annual card (valid 1st January-31st December
There are several daily feeding shows, for the time please ask at the till station. Kids will love the petting zoo
History:
To create a zoo that shows people the alienated nature and the beauty of the animals from their own homeland - that was the basic idea of Hans von Törne, initiator of the Osnabrück home zoo. On October 20, 1934, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Heimattiergarten e.V. Osnabrück was launched into the world at a founding meeting. The hour of birth of the future zoo was the exhibition of the "Community of Friends of the Home Zoo" in the business premises of the Prenzler & Diekmann company on Grosse Strasse. A particular visitor magnet was “Tutti”, a badger that had found a place in an enclosure in the shop window. With the help of a 1:50 scale model, which showed the planned zoo in detail, the initiators promoted the construction of a zoo. The groundbreaking ceremony finally took place on July 22, 1935, and not even a year later the time had come: on July 26, 1936, the excited crowd streamed through the entrance of the home zoo for the first time. In the opening year, the first brown bear also moved to Osnabrück. "Teddy" was on loan from the Duisburg Zoo and after a short time was very popular with the people of Osnabrück. On the Day of Repentance and Prayer in 1936, “Teddy” was supposed to return to Duisburg. But in a letter to the editor in the Osnabrücker Tageblatt, the “Teddy” fans called for a fundraising campaign and within a very short time the amount to buy the bear was collected. The war years hit the home zoo. Ludwig Bäte, chairman of the zoo at the time: “The home zoo was a heap of rubble after the war, the café was almost completely destroyed, and there was hardly anything left of animals. And whatever game could have been saved had found its way into the kitchen when a celebrity from the party came to visit. Hunger hurts. ”But despite all the difficulties, the zoo enthusiasts had great ambitions:“ So it was necessary to start all over and at the same time try to develop the home zoo into a zoo. ”The original plans to create a large zoological-botanical open-air area However, due to financial reasons, they cannot After a year-long guest appearance by the later Berlin zoo director Dr. Heinz Georg Klös, the new zoo director Paul Andreae took up his duties in 1956. The zoo's ambitions were great: First of all, an urgently needed warm house was built (opened in 1960) for the exotic animals that had previously had to move to the Münster zoo in winter. At the same time, a penguin enclosure (1959) and the elephant house (1960) were built. The arrival of the first elephant was a great spectacle and went down in the history of Osnabrück. Purchased by the William Althoff circus, the elephant cow "Toni" was taken across the city to her new home on Schölerberg on April 17th, 1961 after her last appearance in the ring. Hundreds of onlookers lined the streets and saw Toni's arrival. The zoo director's wish to purchase the blackbucks was granted in June 1968. Her portrait adorned the logo of the zoo, which was renamed in 1970, for years. From this point on, the former home zoo was renamed the "Zoogesellschaft Osnabrück e. V. “a real zoo. The association dedicated itself to the task of promoting species protection, research, education and training as well as environmental and landscape protection. There were also plans to build 14 new enclosures in the next few years. In 1978 there was a major disaster: On the night of January 4th, the newly opened multi-purpose warm house was on fire. Nibbled electrical cables are said to have been the cause of the fire. There was immense property damage to the new building and - far worse - many of the animals that were moved into the building perished. The people of Osnabrück reacted with a wave of helpfulness, so that the building could be reopened in March 1979. However, the decade still brought something good: A more modern, ground-level bear facility was built (opening: July 13, 1980). A mixed group of three polar, brown and black bears and two collar bears moved into the facility. The later parents of Tips and Taps also came together among them. With the assumption of office of the new zoo director Wolf Everts on May 1st, 1985 a new era of the zoo began. Over 50 small and large projects were implemented in his 22-year tenure that changed the image of the zoo permanently. Since the inauguration of the new entrance with flamingo and spider monkey house on August 11, 1986, the administrative offices and the connection to the later “Museum am Schölerberg” have been housed there. The new zoo director made it his job to ensure animal-friendly keeping: "After menagerie and excessive hygiene -" animals in aspic "- the zoo enclosures are now made more attractive as substitute landscapes." He set about replacing the former "tile look" of the seventies bit by bit. In 1988 the tropical hall and the aquarium were opened, in 1989 the new penguin enclosure and in the early 1990s the expanded outdoor enclosure for the great apes. In the years that followed, numerous renovations and renovations were pending. In the "animal" area, Everts mainly changed the way elephants were kept because he switched the herd to African elephants. In 1987 "Umtali" and "Sabi" arrived from Zimbabwe. Together with “Toto”, the elephant trio moved into their new elephant park in 1998, which offers them ample space with 300 square meters indoors and 3,000 square meters outdoors. Something happened with the great apes too: The lonely male chimpanzee “Jockel” received first one, then two more females. The zoo team also expanded at the end of the 20th century: In Andreas Busemann, the zoo gained a resourceful businessman who wanted to create a financial cushion for new animal enclosures for the zoo with new marketing and sponsoring strategies. The road to success was already apparent in 1999: with 450,000 visitors and 3,100 annual tickets, the zoo celebrated the most successful year in its history. And the plans for the new millennium promised even more. The first decade of the new millennium was to change Osnabrück Zoo forever - in a positive way, of course. Thanks to the steadily increasing number of sponsors, new financial concepts and successful marketing, the zoo was able to create new animal worlds and thus attract more visitors to the Schölerberg. In the end, the annual number of visitors climbed from 450,000 (1999) to 865,000 (2010)! Other animal worlds increased the attractiveness of the zoo: In 2004 the "Wolf Forest" was opened, in 2007 the "Valley of the Gray Giants" with elephant-bull enclosure and rhino park. In the same year, construction work began on the “Underground Zoo”, which is unique in the world and in which zoo visitors have been able to explore the world of animals underground since 2009. Preparations for “Takamanda” ran almost simultaneously: the zoo acquired an additional plot of land - 5.5 hectares in size - south of the Schölerberg for the African theme world. In 2010, the then Prime Minister Christian Wulff, who had already praised the positive development of the Osnabrück Zoo when the "Samburu" opened, opened the new zoo landscape. the chimpanzee family found a huge new home. The bears also made the headlines: The mixed keeping of different bear species, which was customary up to that time, resulted in offspring that shouldn't actually be. Male polar bear Elvis took a liking to the female brown bear, Susi, and as a result, the “Breisbären” twins Tips and Taps were born in 2005. The zoo accepted its responsibility, broke up the mixed attitude and gave tips and taps a home on Schölerberg for life. The polar bear couple Elvis and Sonia moved to Gelsenkirchen. Susi lived on Schölerberg until her death in September 2018. Opinions are divided on the naked mole rat: With the underground zoo, the zoo received a new star in 2009, on which the opinions differ: some find it disgusting, others great. “White sausage with teeth” is another charming description of this unusual animal: the naked mole rat. With great breeding success, the zoo keeps several groups of this ground rodent and that will continue to do so - despite some “iiih”. Since 2017, shrew long-tongued flower bats have also been living in a newly created "bat grotto" with moonlight and visitors can observe many other zoo inhabitants, such as brown rats, prairie dogs, gray mulls or coruros. In 2007 the then zoo veterinarian Susanne Klomburg took over the office of zoo director. It promoted the topic of “species protection in the zoo” and also positioned the Osnabrück Zoo in the upper league here. It is also the goal of the zoo to convert the last old and outdated animal enclosures into spacious, natural facilities. That is why the renovation work on the bear enclosure started in 2010: In the summer of 2011, the bears “Tips and Taps”, bison, reindeer, lynx, European mink, silver fox, raccoons and wolverines have found a new home in the hilly forest setting in “Kajana Land”. At the same time, the concrete block "Monkey Rock", the enclosure for the Asian pig monkeys, was given a new (old) look. It was converted into a temple ruin, inspired by the famous "Angkor Wat" temple complex in Cambodia. In April 2014 the zoo opened the mysterious “Tiger Temple Garden” as the second part of the Asian adventure world. The kings of the Southeast Asian fauna live in the overgrown area: two Sumatran tigers. Most recently, the ape house was converted into an "orangutan jungle temple" in the style of a temple ruin and opened in autumn 2017. Between the giraffe playground and the “Neue OZ Streichelland”, in the former camel area, animals from North America have also found their place in the past decade. In autumn 2018, the North American wildlife "Manitoba" opened. Here a 120-meter-long high-altitude path leads along Hudson Bay wolves and a black bear. A few meters further on, the wood bison wallow in the sand. A snowy owl barn, strip skunks and Canadian beavers also moved into the animal world. A year later, in the summer of 2019, the first part of the African animal world "Mapungubwe" opened with the rhino enclosure. The name hides the overall enlargement of the rhinoceros and lion enclosures, which should be completed by the end of 2020. A high-altitude path gives visitors a great insight into the world of pachyderms and big cats.
