EP Zoo considering changes after gazelle deaths
six months has led zoo officials to make some changes to the exhibit … which could eventually include removing the gazelles from the zoo altogether. abc-7’s darren hunt was at the zoo today and he has the story: “we had a death about six month ago and it was an injury with a collision with another animal.” fragile gazelle’s, like this one that broke its leg when it was born back in 2011 at the el paso zoo, can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour in bursts … and that can be fatal if they happen to run into anything. “we had another death where stepping in a water bowl in the barn … and then the third one the animal just got excited and ran into the wall and we said, lets look at the situation and see if there is any commonalities and what we found was all of these were happening when we move the animals in or out of the barn onto exhibit.” because of that, th 11 remaing gazelles have been removed from the multi- species exhibit, which they shared with the giraffes and kudu … el paso zoo officials say the gazelles will be housed in a barn on zoo grounds until a better solution can be found. “what we do is we train our animals through voluntary measures to shift out onto the exhibit at the beginning of the day and then with food motivation bring them in at night and again it was during that time that there seemed to be that confusion within the herd and maybe it’s because we have so many young animals.” “marshall said there are number of options, including moving the gazelles to other zoos and replacing them with another kind of animal.” “we’re assessing what we migh want to do and we might want to again, transfer these animals out to an accredited facility and then bring in something maybe a little larger, maybe that’s not so nervous.” darre hunt, abc-7. marshall said one of the animals that could possibly replace the gazelle’s are oryxs … which are hunted in new mexico and can be found at white sands. and like gazelle’s, they are from the antelope species. kvia.com/slash/pope… it’s your one-stop shop