News team
Thandora, the lonely elephant in the Bloemfontein Zoo who was moved to nature more than a month ago, is now totally free.
After a month of 24-hour monitoring she has accepted her new home in the Gondwana Game Reserve near Mossel Bay and joined up with the elephant bulls in the reserve.
Mark Rutherfoord, owner of the reserve, says she has adapted very well and spends more and more time with the herd every day. She already walks between six and ten kilometres per day. “She is requiring less and less human attention. I think one of the biggest challenges that we had over and above her feeding and fitness was how we were actually going to desensitise her to the human requirements that she had and we are starting all of a sudden to see strive in that direction and she is doing exceptionally well with the other herd,” Rutherfoord says.
An excited Darryl Barnes, manager of the Bloemfontein Zoo, says he thinks Thandora is very glad about her new home in the bush with the other animals, as she was a lonely zoo-elephant: “At first I think she would have asked, what have you done to me, but now that she is walking with the herd can roam freely in nature, now she thinks, it was a great move, thank you very much,” Barnes adds proudly. The man who cared for Thandora for eight years in the Bloemfontein Zoo, Johannes Hlahane, says he still misses Thandora. And so do others. People must be able to see these gentle giants. Hlahane says he misses Thandora and that he is not happy because in the future children will not know what kind of an animal an elephant is.
Animal lovers say the planned move of the zoo to the metro’s game farm at Kwaggafontein will not only create space for elephants for Bloemfontein again, but it will also be better home for the other zoo animals. In Executive Mayor Thabo Manyoni’s 2013/2014 budget speech address he revealed that the zoo will soon be relocated to Kwaggafontein and said it will be a very different type of experience for residents. “The city will be investing R107.6 million in the next three years in relocating the zoo and developing a theme park at Kwaggafontein Game Reserve. We will have a zoo that is interactive instead of where animals are only caged in. They will be roaming.
The open-air zoo concept is quite unique to South Africa and it is believed that both visitors and animals will benefit from the new set-up. According to Barnes this open-air zoo will be the first of its kind in Africa.