Page 22 - May-June-July Life In Naples Magazine

A Big Day by Tim L.Tetzlaff

for Giraffes Director of Conservation & Communications | Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens

I t’s a common lot in life. An ordinary day for one person can be
a watershed moment in the life of another. And so it was on
a recent spring morning when you may have been settling in
to work or mulling over your plans for the day. And even here
at the Zoo, the casual observer could see the routine of the regular
walkers exercising in the gardens and early guests sipping coffee in the
pavilion. But for the animal care staff, this morning represented the
culmination of years of devotion for the survival of an iconic African
species as one of our seven giraffes was destined to leave the herd.

Locally, the story began back in 2009 as we were
finalizing plans to welcome giraffes to Naples and
began seeking keepers with expertise in caring for

these giants. Looking over the needs for the giraffe
population outside the wild, it became clear there
was a need for more zoos to have bachelor herds,
a social structure giraffes form in the wild.
Over the next year, we began assembling an
all-male herd spanning the continent from

San Francisco Zoo and Denver Zoo in the West to Lion
Country Safari and Disney’s Animal Kingdom in the East.
But an all boys’ club was never the end game.
That’s because these giraffes are part of the Reticulated and
Rothschild Giraffe Species Survival Plan® (SSP), a cooperative
conservation effort among zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos
and Aquariums (AZA). Just like in the wild where males will leave
the bachelor herds to seek out female company, bachelor herds in
zoos will send out some males for breeding. In zoos, these moves are
scientifically analyzed by an SSP coordinator using custom software
that includes the extensive ancestry records of all the giraffes in North
America to insure the healthiest genetic herd for long-term survival.
And this time, the SSP recommendation was for our giraffe
Jigsaw to move away from the bachelor herd. Jigsaw was born at
Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee and has spent the last five years
with us in Naples. And this native Floridian would continue his
life in the state as he was set to meet a herd of six females at White
Oak Conservation Center in northern Florida. With limited public
access, this AZA-certified facility is little known to the average
citizen, but well known among the zoological community for their
successes including rehabilitating orphaned Florida panthers that
have been released back into the wild.
As you can imagine, transporting a giraffe is a bit different than
taking your dog for a ride in the car. Giraffes are far more cautious and
don’t respond with the same enthusiasm to an excited call of “Who
wants to go for a ride!” so training was implemented for the big day.
For their daily monitoring as well as veterinary care, our giraffes are
already trained to move through a chute where keepers have different
height access points to get an up close look from hoof to horn
(technically not horns, but ossicones, but I digress). On moving day, a
custom giraffe trailer would be waiting at the end of this chute to take
him to his new herd.To prepare him, staff began regularly backing up
one of the zoo’s smaller hoofstock trailers while he was in the chute.
While he responded beautifully, the moment of truth would come

22 Life in Naples | May • June • July 2015