Financial Journalist

SCMP (Sunday Post) 7.6.93

Singapore woos tourists with night safaris

The sound of the insects was deafening. From all black sides of the tropical jungle track came the chirping, clicking and croaking of hidden night life. “I can’t remember ever hearing it that loud,” whispered Bernard Harrison, the executive director of Singapore Zoo. “The heavy rain must have brought them out.”

But it was not the insects we had come to listen to. We were looking for the bharal.

Now, if you were told that a bharal is a sure-footed blue sheep which hailed from the craggy foothills of the Himalayas and it was standing on a rocky outcrop happily chewing rough grass and oblivious of insect noise and darkness, you might raise an eyebrow. Himalayan foothills do not normally come equipped with equatorial jungle insects and 50 metres down the track become Himalayan marshland.

Bernard Harrison was showing off Singapore Zoo’s self-contained 40 hectare night safari park. It’s a world first.

The night safari park is adjacent to the Singapore Zoological Gardens and when completed will be about one-and-a-half times bigger. Its aim is to give visitors the opportunity to see the behaviour of nocturnal animals in a natural habitat. Up until now visitors to zoos or safari parks around the world have had a limited opportunity to see such animals - most zoos reverse night and day in nocturnal houses but this limits the animals’ size and their environment.

In the tropics, most of the animals are nocturnal.

“We have found ourselves in a virtually unique position. We have the climatic conditions to do this project - you need darkness to get the animals active and you ought to have a similar environment,” says Mr Harrison. In temperate climates, for example, when darkness does fall early the temperature drops. “Also such a project is expensive and you can’t show the nocturnal animals for half the year because it doesn’t get dark until 10 or 11 pm and you’ll lose money.”

Only a handful of zoos worldwide fall into the equatorial belt where night falls at a regular time and Singapore is one of them.

“Some of the very large habitats here leave the animals free to roam under unobtrusive lighting. The vegetation has, for the most part been left in its natural state, and we hope will give the visitor a feeling of actually travelling though a jungle under bright moonlight,” explains the zoo’s executive chairman, Dr Ong Swee Law.

At present only about ten per cent of the animals the zoo intends to display have been put into their new homes. When the S$60 million project (financed by government arms and the Singapore Tourist Authority) opens its doors in June next year, the zoo expects to have 1,200 animals roaming 47 habitats.

When it does open for the expected 600,000 visitors in the first year (although considering the zoo itself managed 1.35 million last year, its seems an under-estimation), they will board a tram which will take them through many of the exhibits but allow them to get on and off to follow several paths totalling 1.3 kilometres.

The zoo’s visitors are 65 per cent Singaporean. The rest are tourists. The Night Safari, however, hopes to make it a 50/50 split. With the vast majority of the new animals from Asia, many of them endangered, more Asian visitors are expected.

“We’ll be attracting people with package deals, like dinner evenings and pushing tours through tour operators. Our main selling point will have to be reinforcing that experience of a tropical jungle,” says Mr Harrison.

He certainly sees the natural environment with the offer of dinner at end of an evening a great attraction for Hongkong visitors.

The animals themselves will be in specially designed enclosures similar to their natural habitat and separated from the public by strategic moats, cattle grids and discrete natural walls. Other animals, like some species of deer, will be allowed to roam free around the forest but attracted to artificial waterholes where they would usually congregate at night.

Of course, it will still be night when the animals become active but British theatre lighting designer, Simon Corder, was brought in to provide discreet but effective illumination. All the exhibits will be lit using low intensity but illuminating lighting. “It wasn’t an easy balance, keeping the animals comfortable that it was night and letting the visitor see them. So far we’ve found it takes the animals only two or three days to get used to the lights and accept it still is night,” explains Mr Harrison.

And it is effective. From that Himalayan bharal the tram moves down to a Himalayan marshland environment where nocturnal birds - whistling teal, ducks and coot cattle egret squat in their new homes. “I didn’t think swan were nocturnal,” said one member of the party. “They aren’t really,” laughs Mr Harrison, “But we have to have some poetic license.”

Further on are wild Indian water buffalo but tame compared to the African variety. Jackals fighting over food just thrown into their enclosure are highly active compared to the slumbering vegetarian neighbours of two Indian one-horned Rhino.

“There are only about 600 of these left in the wild,” explains Mr Harrison. Conservation is another aim of this park. “In the long-term it’s a very important angle, putting together a group of endangered Asian animals. Given these facilities and expertise we hope to do some captive breeding in the future.”

Already the zoo itself has successfully bred many endangered species and for Mr Harrison it will be an important part of the night safari’s ‘raison d’etre’. “People come and see our other endangered species and pay for it - it’s a cash viable business and we expect the night safari to be even more successful, after all it is unique.”

The zoo’s consultant, Sri Lankan, Lyn de Alwis, originally floated the idea. With his 23 years helping design and run the zoo he had several suggestions as how the 40 hectares might be developed. Dr Ong liked the night safari idea.

“Dr Ong liked it because it was unique but also because it complemented the zoo - it doesn’t compete directly because it’s a night attraction,” ventures Mr Harrison.

As for problems, the zoo experts are keeping their fingers crossed. “We don’t foresee anything major - getting the animals into their hidden enclosures after midnight might be one, but we don’t think we’ll have problems with members of the public molesting the animals. Although we are a bit concerned about losing some of them in the jungle and to pythons,” he laughs.

The Night Safari will be open to visitors from June 1994 between 6.30 pm.

Singapore Night Safari