Director´s view

Director´s view
Director´s view
Griffon vulture and Egyptian vulture in the “Grand Restaurant Potočnica”. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

During our trip to the Eastern Rhodopes, we received news that the restaurant we intended to visit was very well stocked. Although none of the pastoralists or any of the surrounding villages had any fallen livestock to give, the abundance of offal from the nearest abattoir was more than enough to replace them. I should point out...

Mbama is just under three hundred kilometres from Yaoundé. Whereas in the capital the bushmeat vendors threw stones at me, in Mbama people were willing to be photographed with the pangolins... Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

For the first time in more than a year and a half, we visited Cameroon during the holidays. It was undoubtedly a rewarding trip, not least because at the end of it I signed a memorandum with the Cameroonian Minister of Forests and Fauna, Mr. Jules Ndoret Ndongo. This is a very significant step in the continued development of the...

Prague Zoo is the only facility outside of Asia that is open to the public and where it is possible to see the northern river terrapin in the flesh. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

It is not just one of the rarest and most beautiful terrapins in the world. On top of that, it's a terrapin with a story that has the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster: a shocking revelation, a desperate search, a spy hiding her true identity, intricate talks with superstitious villagers, tragedy, and a hint of a happy ending....

Foto: Miroslav Bobek, Zoo Praha

In Greek mythology the Echidna was half-woman and half-serpent. This is an excellent choice. Echidnas are very old and at first glance look like a sort of overgrown hedgehog or a small porcupine, however, although they are mammals, they still exhibit a number of reptilian traits, such as the presence of a cloaca, egg-laying and...

When I was preparing for my first ever visit to Prague Zoo’s breeding and acclimatisation station in Dolní Dobřejov, just before St. Nicholas Day 2010, snow was lying fresh on the ground. Everyone started trying to talk me out of the trip. It was as if I was going way up beyond the Arctic Circle, not just eighty kilometres...

Priest and ethnolinguist Maurice Ekoalea Mvolo. Photo: Jocelyn Ewane Aubery

There are about seven thousand languages in the world. However, some estimates suggest that 50–90 % of them could be extinct by the end of the century. So, it is fair make a comparison between endangered languages and endangered species. Moreover, one of the potentially endangered languages is in direct contact with endangered...

The tawny frogmouth. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

An analysis of 27,621 bird photos on Instagram has shown that the most aesthetically appealing feathered bird is – the tawny frogmouth.

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

On Monday afternoon, we released four Przewalski's horse mares into the almost twenty-hectare enclosure at Prague’s Dívčí hrady. Shortly after, when I saw two of them on the horizon with Prague’s Pankrác district in the background, I felt like I was in Nairobi National Park, where the high-rise buildings of the Kenyan...

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

There are just a few days to go until the moment when Przewalski's horses will be running around the fenced in plain of Prague’s Dívčí hrady. As they do so they will not only bring back the history of this exceptional site and make it more attractive, but their grazing should also contribute to the return of some native...

Brazilian merganser, photo: Zooparque Itatiba

Even a single electricity generator can increase the chances of a critically endangered species’ survival. This is not some theoretical example, but a cold, hard fact. Last year, we financed just such a generator at Brazil’s Itatiba Zoo.