Loop 030 printable

Volume 2, No. 7. April 12, 2002

Habitat for habitats
This was a job for the United States Air Force. A unit at Patrick Air Force Base near Melbourne, Florida, deployed to the nearby Brevard Zoo, set up an encampment for a weekend and went to work building the zoo’s free flight aviary. “They did a deployment exercise, brought in the big equipment and trained on how to put up a structure,” said Gayla Schaefer, Brevard Zoo’s public relations and marketing director. “And we just loved it.”

Brevard Zoo calls itself “The Handmade Zoo” with good reason. The zoo, which opened in 1994, largely has been built on donated labor and skills from the community. This month Brevard Zoo broke ground on its fourth major expansion, a 10-acre African exhibit that will feature reticulated giraffe and white rhinos and include kayak rides. The zoo received a $2.5 million grant from the Space Coast Tourism Development Council and figures to cover the whole cost of the project with that grant.

That is an easily attainable budget for this 78-acre zoo: the original facility was built on $3.5 million thanks to the labors of more than 16,000 volunteers. Native Florida and Australasia exhibits were subsequently added, giving the zoo 415 animals representing 130 species and attracting 220,000 visitors last year. Designers already have worked a year on Expedition Africa without the zoo spending a dime, Schaefer said. That’s thanks to BRPH Companies, Inc. of Melbourne, which, as it did with the zoo’s Flying Fox Forest bat exhibit, has donated design and engineering services for the planning of Expedition Africa. The zoo’s executive director played a major role in the new exhibit’s design, too; Margo McKnight came to Brevard from Busch Gardens Tampa where she designed the Edge of Africa section.

The most unique aspect of the new exhibit, scheduled to open April 2003, will be the kayak rides. Already the zoo offers kayak tours through a 22-acre restored wetlands on the property. In July 1999 McKnight oversaw the opening of the Wetlands Outpost featuring an overlook of the area, but instead of building boardwalks into the wetlands, she launched the kayak tours. At $3 per person, the guided tours take 20 minutes. The tours proved so popular Brevard Zoo began hosting four-hour eco-tours of the adjacent Indian River Lagoon, a $40-per person program that includes a kayak lesson and picnic lunch during the tour.

For Expedition Africa, the kayaks will offer an alternative vantage point for guests to view the animal exhibits. The kayakers will be restricted, however, though planners have not decided whether to use fencing, channeling or a guideline along the bottom of the river. “People will be paddling their own kayak, but they’ll be constrained so they can’t go into the rhino habitat,” Schaefer said.

Guests also will be able to see the exhibits by the zoo’s train, which will be doubled and rerouted to encompass Expedition Africa. That retracking will take place over two weekends in May, courtesy of a community day out.