Vets launch Operation Zoo

Prime Minister Helen Clark makes friends by blowing gently on the trunk of 22-year-old Burma while feeding the elephant an apple. Blowing is a form of elephant greeting. Pictures / Kenny Rodger

Vets at Auckland Zoo will soon be on show just like the animals, so visitors with a strong stomach can watch them operating on some of New Zealand's rarest species.

A major fundraising drive is under way for the zoo's new Centre for Conservation Medicine, to be opened by next year.

Included in $4.6 million research facility plans are glassed-in viewing rooms for the public to watch kiwi, native frogs and tuatara undergoing medical tests and even surgery.

Prime Minister Helen Clark opened the zoo's already-completed entry complex and education facility yesterday but zoo director Glen Holland said the focus was now on the new conservation project. About $2.4 million has already been raised.

The centre will expand some of the pioneering work done at the zoo over the past few years on health screening and disease risk in native birds and reptiles.

Mr Holland said the centre would play a "critical" role in developing strategies to control the spread of human-to-animal and animal-to-human diseases.

"Seventy-five per cent of newly emerging human diseases, such as Sars and Asian bird flu, have an animal origin," he said.

Senior zoo veterinarian and project leader for the centre for conservation medicine, Dr Richard Jakob-Hoff, said the impact of disease on already-endangered wildlife had been underestimated in the past.

"Disease is one of those hidden threats. While we've been focusing on introduced predators we've focused very little on disease."

Not only could disease kill the last remaining populations of critically threatened animals, examples of diseases passed between animals and humans were increasing.

"The human population is expanding and that means less of a buffer between us and wild animals," Dr Jakob-Hoff said.

Mr Holland said all New Zealanders had a stake in preserving the country's wildlife and the centre would help the public understand the zoo's conservation role.

UNDER THREAT

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New Zealand sealion: 50 per cent of pups and 20 per cent of adults killed by disease in 1998; pup survival rate falls by up to 25 per cent in 2002 and 2003

Archey's frog: Disease linked to fungus is killing acutely threatened frogs