“Thanks to the incredible mahi of our staff, the zoo will partially reopen from 9.30am this Saturday 4 February following unprecedented flooding over the past week,” the zoo said in a post to Facebook.
Some of the areas that were worst affected by the flooding, including Te Wao Nui, the South American Rainforest Track and the Kidzone play area, will remain closed while clean-up and safety assessments continue.
Online tickets will not be available for purchase when the zoo reopens, so all new tickets will need to be purchased onsite.
Lower-lying areas of the zoo were significantly impacted when heavy rain hit Auckland on Friday.
The most affected areas were close to Motions Creek, which rose to high levels on Friday afternoon.
“Our teams took a proactive decision to evacuate some of the animal areas near the creek to higher ground,” the zoo said in a statement.
“This included the skinks, scheltopusiks and beaded dragons of Lizard Lane, American alligators and New Zealand reptiles.”
The creek continued to rise and in the early evening flowed over the top of its stone wall boundary and caused major flooding to the lower-lying part of the zoo.
“Our zoo team’s actions to move the animals prior to the flooding, was critical to ensuring that these animals weren’t negatively affected by the flood water,” the zoo said.
Sadly, the bodies of two small birds were recovered on Saturday – a zebra finch and a kōare. They appeared to have been overwhelmed by the volume of rain and waterlogged.
Thankfully these appear to be the only casualties of the storm.
