Draft Town Belt Management Plan - Wellington City Council

214
The Wellington Zoological Gardens
Figure 8: Entrance to the Wellington Zoological Gardens, ca 1920s.
(Photo by Sydney Charles Smith, Alexander Turnbull Library, PAColl-8832)
Wellington’s zoological gardens were New Zealand’s first, established in 1906, on Town
Belt land when a lion was gifted to the city. This gift coincided with a residents’ petition to
the Council to establish a zoo. An existing reservoir at Newtown Park, together with
adjoining land, was fenced off, cages erected and a menagerie at the Botanic Garden shifted
to the new site. By 1912, when an entry charge was first introduced, more than 500 animals
had been acquired. Interestingly, the zoo’s enclosure and admission charges did not attract
the same level of opposition that ignited over leasing Town Belt to sports groups; perhaps
because the zoo was perceived as a public facility available to all, even if not free of charge.
The zoo’s development focused, for many years, on providing visitor entertainment such as
elephant rides, chimpanzee tea parties and miniature railway rides. Since the mid-1980s,
however, the emphasis has changed to animal welfare, species conservation programmes
and visitor education.
The Wellington Zoo Trust was formed in 2003 to take over the zoo’s day-to-day
management on behalf of the Council.
3. A green belt
Now you see it, now it’s gone
When the English settlers arrived in Wellington in 1840, Te Ahumairangi Hill (Tinakori Hill) and
the inland parts of Kelburn and the Brooklyn hills were, according to early descriptions and
illustrations, covered in verdant podocarp and broadleaf forest. Charles Heaphy recalled seeing
“high manuka , some of the trees forty feet high” growing along The Terrace when he visited in
Draft Town Belt Management Plan October 2012