Taipei City Zoo's much anticipated animal adoption and sponsorship campaign got off to a rather muted start earlier this week. On the same day zoo officials initially planned to set the campaign's wheels in motion, pachyderm matters unexpectedly arose.
The death of Lin Wang (林旺) the zoo's Asian elephant, who died of natural causes in his enclosure last Wednesday, meant that zoo officials spent much of the day answering questions relating the death of the nation's favorite oversized son rather than promoting the sponsorship campaign.
With over five million visitors a year generating annual revenues of roughly NT$162 million, the 165 hectare zoo and its 2,350 residents are one of the nation's leading domestic tourist destinations. And one that, according to Taipei Zoo associate researcher Chao Ming-chieh (趙明杰), is in a unique position to lead the nation's drive to protect endangered animals, both indigenous and foreign.
"We've been toying with the idea of animal adoption for several years, but we weren't quite sure how to implement it. We realized the need to ensure that children were as big a part of the scheme as companies were," explained Chao. "This is why we settled for a tier system. Individuals can donate as little as NT$1,000 per year, while corporation are asked to donate a minimum of NT$200,000 per year."
Capital obtained through the scheme will go towards feeding the animals, maintaining exhibits, helping with habitat enrichment and research programs, and, many argue more importantly, animal conservation and education programs.
"The minimum contribution of NT$1,000 may appear rather inane when you consider the cost of animal upkeep, but if we don't get children involved, providing them an opportunity to learn, animal conservation really has no future," Chao continued.
While this is the first time such a venture has been tried in Taiwan, animal sponsorship programs are by no means new, and have proved beneficial to humans and animals alike at zoos from Sacramento, California to Blackpool, England.
One of the earliest and most successful animal adoption and sponsorship schemes in Asia is that of Singapore Zoo, which began in 1977 when the zoo's Brazilian tapir was put up for adoption at a cost of S$5,000 per annum -- NT$99,997 at today's exchange rate.
Since then Singapore Zoo has expanded its adoption program to include not only individual animals, but also entire exhibits. This has been done in order to help with education programs and cover the whopping monthly fee of S$100,000 (approx. NT$2 million) it takes to feed the zoo's 2,800 animals.
So popular is the scheme, in fact, that Singapore has recently taken steps to offer tax benefits for corporate sponsors. The amount of money changing hands in Singapore is a lot greater than Taipei Zoo expects to see, however, with costs for adopting animals such as baboons reaching a staggering S$35,000 (NT$699,867) per year.
Tax breaks for those who adopt animals at Taipei Zoo are currently not on the agenda, as the sums of money involved in sponsorship are relatively small.
"The needs of Taipei's and Singapore's zoos are different, but the fact that the scheme has proven so popular and successful there means we naturally want to follow in their footsteps," said Chao. "As it's only early days, I wouldn't like to put a figure to how much revenue we can generate. But if 100,000 individuals choose to adopt animals then we're still looking at a substantial amount of money."
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