Budapest Zoo & Botanical Garden
By decision of his vets, Assam the bull elephant after arriving on Wednesday will be available for the audience to take the first glimpse. Weighing close to 3 tons, he got „cased up” on Tuesday in Ypres, Belgium and been shipped to Budapest in the late afternoon with police guidance. Assam’s container was hoisted in with a crane by the Headquarters of The Budapest Fire Department but by 3pm he took over his new living quarters in the elephant stall.
Ahead of the scheduled time, on Friday, the visitors will be able to see the new bull elephant that has arrived to The Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden.
Bringing these animals to a totally new zoo, environment can be diffcult for them to deal with that the usual process is to just keep them away from visitors for a few days and give them all the space they need to adjust, but Assam seems so relaxed that as of tomorrow he is well prepared emotionly.
Of course the fact that his 2 attendants has travelled with him as chaperons made a huge difference in keeping Assam in a relatively good mood, thus making it possbile for him to get used to his new home. The reason this animal got to be in our facility was made by the Europian Association of Zoos and Aquariua (EAZA) as part of a breeding program.
The top priority is to have a certain elephant stock in Budapest that would ensure the further productions of elephant babies. Because such as this did not happen since 1961, mostly in lack of breeding male animals. Hella and Zitta are the 2 older female elephants that have been brought to us in 1996 are also not competent first and foremost because of their age to brink newborns but next year another female will be arriving to accompany our current new male.
All these elephants are comfortably placed thanks to the Elephant Hall that was built as a joint to the old Elephant House.
The whole carrying process has started months ago. After taking a few potential elephants into consideration in the Bellewaerde Park, Ypres, Belgium, EAZA decided by Assam. He was born on the 7th of october 2000 in Chester Zoo and had been living in Ypres since the 18th of august 2004. One week before Assam was transported to Budapest 2 of our keepers went to Ypres to take care of Assam along with his own 2 attendants. This movement is very important for two reasons: the new keepers would learn how the elephants are treated in he belgian zoo while the animal will take to them much more easily. To bring Assam here we required a service of EKIPA that specializes in elephant shipping and located in the Netherlands.
The total lenght of the vehicle to carry Assam was 16.5 meter in all out of which 13.3 meter was the carriage connected to the semitrailer. The elephant container is 4 meters in heigths which is the right size to drive under overpasses and electric wires.
The belgan, dutch and hungarian technicians have started to case Assam up on Tuesday at 6 am which was going on for the whole of the afternoon, so it all became a little bit more complicated as they have expected it would be. Sometime after 3 pm the convoy containing the elephant truck and 2 microbuses of technicians left for Budapest. With short breaks and shifting drivers they made the approximately 3000 miles in 21 hours. They succedeed at arriving almost in time, only 20 minutes behind to the Budapest Zoo. From the border crossing point by Hegyeshalom the convoy was escorted by the Police on route M1. The same guiding routine is present inside the city. The Police Headquarters of Budapest led the convoy from Hegyeshalom, while The Headquarters of the Fire Department of Budapest assisted in the lifting of the elephant container onto the grounds of the Zoo.
This action requiered a huge crane since the elephant and the container together weighed 7 tons. The container was to be lifted over the fence by the Zoo ring-road (Állatkerti krt.), onto the elephant’s yard. Specifically designed for purposes such as this, slided on a carriage the container was reeled to the elephant house and only than could Assam been let go of. This part didn’t take too long so by the afternoon Assam was in his stall. The operation concluded into removing the empty container which led us to estimate the actual weight of Assam and it turned out he is :2600kgs which is as accurate as can be since the zoo staff was guessing he should be about 2.5-3 tons.
Hereby we wish to thank the Headquarters of the Fire Department and the Police Headquarters of Budapest and also the Township of Zugló for their participation.
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