So tonight we're going down to the port to welcome our new giraffe who is gonna
arrive in like half an hour. We're gonna watch him being offloaded from the ship
and then we're gonna bring him back to the zoo.
We're getting close. I'm a bit nervous.
Excited maybe it's a better word - we've made it this far right - it should be the easy part.
So the giraffe we are getting today is Billy. He is 13 months old and he's coming
from Australia Zoo and with him we have our keeper from Auckland Zoo, Ben, who's
been travelling with him from Australia.
So, we're here at the port now waiting for Billy and the crew to clear the
customs so we can get started on our journey back to the zoo. There's a lot of
logistics involved in a transport like this. Traveling with Billy we have
two zookeepers and a vet to be able to provide him with a good level of care
throughout the transport and they've been working full time taking care of
Billy throughout this journey so he's been in good hands
I work for a company called Air Transport World Freight and we've done
the zoo's work for near on 20 years. The giraffe will be on the ship here. Hopefully
we'll have it off here within the next half hour and it'll be on the truck on his
way to the zoo. It's taken you know many months of planning from the
Australian end - at our end is the easy part to clear it in and that.
So here tonight we have the Ministry of Primary Industries, a customs department, the
Ports of Auckland and zoo staff of course. In conjunction with that we've
got two transport companies involved - one to move the crate from here to the
edge of the zoo and another crane truck to move it within the zoo.
So they're moving the crane into position now to hopefully retrieve the giraffe
which should be in the middle of the stack. Should be surrounded by containers -
that's to give it protection from the weather and the elements and so that the
crew can actually look in.
Good I think. Slowly coming off the boat now
Welcome to Auckland man!
He seems curious and alert so that's good - success yeh!
So now we're gonna head back to the zoo. We're gonna load him up to a different
truck and take him down to the drop house. I'm gonna pick up Ben and the rest
of the crew on the ship that's gonna come with us to the zoo.
So we just spent four and a half days with Billy out at sea and yes it was an interesting experience.
So we went over a few days early just to actually meet Billy, meet the
keepers, see how they feed him, what they feed him, his routine - just to kind of get
a feel for his nice personality. It was very good, he was very nice, he was
very chilled, the perfect passenger really, he was always up and eating
every time we went to check him, he was very receptive to food, very calm, always
there to stand there and watch us and see what we were doing so he's always
cooperating if we needed him to come closer for anything and just make sure he was
doing okay. Yeah, I think overall it was a good move for him.
It's a great moment for us to welcome Billy. What I would like to do is have Tommy and Lucas just walk us
through what's going to happen for the next
I suppose 3/4 an hour until we get Billy safely into containment in the zoo.
We're gonna walk down very slow - I'll probably walk at the front, he'll walk at the
back and guide us just on the tight corners. We'll get the truck into the
position where it can safely lift it into the compound.
So far we're just trying to bring Billy our giraffe towards the giraffe house.
The truck is quite long and is quite tall so it's trying to meander the way through the
zoo, trying to find the best possible route, so it's quite slow but steady going
at a minute and it's obviously very dark so hopefully we'll get there soon but
it has taken a bit of time.
So we've got the crate reversed in and so the next plan is to try and get that
off the truck and onto the floor so by using this big crane and it's just going
to swivel around so the door from the crate is facing the door of the giraffe house.
Pretty excited yeah. So it's been a long journey to get to this stage
and yeah Billy being four days at sea, it'd be nice for him to actually have
some steady ground to make home.
So it's been a really really long night, it's now 4 am and Billy's finally
arrived, he's in his nice new safe area and yes it's really exciting for us here at
Auckland Zoo because we finally got the male that we've waited for so long.
So this is his first day into the new habitat and so he's just going around -
his different senses, different sounds, different smells and he's just quite
relaxed at the minute and Rikki is definitely taken it upon
herself to be with Billy - kind of mother him a little bit, make sure he's getting
on OK and showing him the ropes. It's really really good it's nice to see,
we've been through a lot together and to get to this point it's fantastic to see
Billy coming out and be quite confident. We are all really excited for
Billy to meet his new family in New Zealand where he'll become a wonderful
ambassador for his wild counterparts. It is important for zoological facilities
across the Australasian area to actually work together for great outcomes for
wildlife. This is not only through education, through people coming through
the gates, but also through breeding programs. The plan for Billy is to
actually be our breeding bull. Over time he will kind of establish himself within
the herd, they'll see him as more mature male and hopefully he'll get along with
the girls and hopefully have some offspring of himself.
In the wild, giraffe are actually declining in number. We do work with the Giraffe
Conservation Foundation which is an African-based charity and by having
giraffe in the zoo we're actually making sure they're going to continue to breed
and hopefully ensure the future survival of giraffe.