Zoo Of The World: Cote d'Ivoire

Abidjan Zoo

Zoo d'Abidjan, Route du Zoo, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Abidjan Zoo is the National Zoo of Cote D’Ivoire formerly known as the Ivory Coast. The Zoo is currently being rehabilitated through a project initiated by the Association Du Calao www.calao-africa.org, and facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Association-du-Calao-asbl/153666978035212. which is a small but very active and proactive Conservation group. Richard Champion, a zoologist from the UK, is with the help of a great network of experts and volunteers, helping to rebuild the zoo.

The zoo, animals and staff has been through difficult times due to the civil war in 2011. The zoo has an amazing range of animals, with many of great conservation importance, set in a beautiful environment. The zoo has Forest Elephant, Pygmy Hippo, West African Chimpanzee, Leopard, Hyena, Forest Buffalo, Civet, and genets, Mangebeys, Slender Snout Crocodiles, along with other primates, birds, and reptiles. The zoo is also building one of the best natural elephant enclosures there is, alongside other developments. The zoo is a developing zoo, and all the work is done sustainably and on small budgets, with the main focus to improve the lives of the animals, education of visitors and with a long term conservation purpose.

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Abidjan Zoo, located at the edge of Deux Plateaux - Cocody was first created as a private Zoo in, it is believed 1930, but was given to the State of Cote d'Ivoire in 1972, and opened to the general public in 1973. At that time the price of entry was 300 F CFA, and remains 300 F CFA to this day. Whilst the price of entry may not have increased, it is a very sad fact of the recent political/social/military/economic turmoil, starting with the Coup d'Etat of December 1999, through the various, and many, "evenements" that lead up to the "Battle for Abidjan" in April 2011, that the Zoo population has declined from over 500 animals and 53 species, down to 170 animals and 24 species. Unfortunately all the carnivores died of starvation during the battle (with the exception of the Spotted Hyenas), because the meat supplied from the Vridi Abattoir, some 10 kilometres away, could not be brought to the Zoo.

However, a new lease of life has been given to the Zoo, thanks to the efforts of a large group of national and international volunteers, guided by a Luxembourg based NGO Association du Calao (find it in Facebook), and aided financially by the Swiss and Ivoirian governments. A new lion enclosure is to be built, and the chimpanzee quarters improved.

The Zoo is looking clean, the animals are looking well fed, and well looked after. There is a spectacular collection of a rare West African Crocodile, the mecistops cataphractus more commonly known as the Slender Snouted Crocodile. There is a female Forest Elephant, named CAN, born the day that the Ivoirian National Football Team (aka "The Elephants") beat the favourites, Senegal, in Dakar, Senegal in 1992. The late President Felix Houphouet-Boigny donated the elephant to the zoo.