Creature comfort gets a boost at Buffalo Zoo

May 22nd, 2009 • Related • Filed Under

Animal hospital is state-of-the-art, makes quarantine pass more easily

Zoo animals are sometimes better left alone — for example, when they first arrive from the wild and might harbor pests or illnesses that could spread to established members of the collection.

It can be a forlorn time, but newcomers will at least be able to spend their mandatory quarantine in ritzier digs at the Buffalo Zoo’s expanded veterinary hospital.

A 2,000-square-foot addition to the 8,000-square-foot facility includes three bright, spacious rooms where newly arrived animals will spend 30 to 90 days to make sure they are free of parasites and pathogens before joining the general population.

Derek Gee / Buffalo News Veterinarian Kurt Volle, left, and veterinary technician Alice Rohauer check out Barney, a ball python, in the new zoo clinic.

That’s merely one positive result of a $2 million upgrade that has brought the Frank A. McClelland Sr. Veterinary Hospital, named for a vet who served the zoo for 30 years, into line with current zoo standards.

Dr. Kurt Volle, who treated animals in a side room at the Rainforest Falls exhibit during construction (some minor cases were also handled at nearby Central Park Animal Hospital), will command a roomy new corner office and a surgical suite worthy of any hospital, veterinary or otherwise.

Volle also will have a new $90,000 radiology laboratory and computerized images and records to work with. A recovery room, holding areas and three air systems will help keep the environment clean and safe.

The single-story hospital next to the Giraffe House was considered state-of-the-art when it opened in 1967 but was badly outdated by 2006, when the Association of Zoos and Aquariums told the zoo that modernizing the hospital and the historic Elephant House were musts.

Both projects moved to the top of the zoo’s $75 million reconstruction program, and special drives were launched to fund them.

An “I Love Elephants” campaign brought in $1 million, including countless small contributions from the public. It paid for a 750-square-foot interior addition to the Elephant House, completed last fall, that gave the three resident Asian elephants more indoor breathing room.

The hospital cause was boosted by the Western New York veterinary community, whose “Show Us Your Stripes” campaign raised $250,000.

With both hurry-up projects out of the way, work can begin on the Heritage Farm Children’s Area, which will simulate rural life near the Erie Canal in the mid-1800s.

The children’s zoo on the Ring Road perimeter of the 23z-acre Delaware Park zoo will feature heritage sheep, pigs, rabbits and chickens, a wetlands bog, a restored 1850s dairy barn and a replica of a 19th century Erie Canal lock.