Bengal cubs bound for Hilo

Two new felines are on their way to the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens.

A pair of Bengal tiger cubs are expected to arrive next week at the county-owned zoo. The cubs, a white male and an orange female, were born last July.

They were gifted to the zoo by Great Cats World Park in Cave Junction, Ore., said Ilihia Gionson, executive assistant to Mayor Billy Kenoi.

In an email, Gionson said the cubs would be viewable as of March 4. They will live in a enclosure adjacent to their sleeping quarters for their first 120 days at the zoo, per state quarantine requirements.

“The zoo anticipates celebrating the tigers’ birthdays around the same time they are released from quarantine,” Gionson said.

Panaewa’s tiger enclosure, described by zoo director Pam Mizuno as the facility’s focal point, has been vacant for more than two years. Namaste, the 15-year-old white Bengal tiger who was the zoo’s star attraction for more than a decade, was euthanized in January 2014.

“We started the process to get new tigers over a year ago,” Mizuno said in an email.

The new cubs are approximately the same age as Namaste was when he first arrived, she said.

According to testimony presented during the lengthy permit process needed to bring the cubs into Hawaii, the zoo has had five tigers since it opened in 1978.

The cubs’ permit was unanimously approved during a Jan. 26 meeting of the state Board of Agriculture, following unanimous approval from the state Department of Agriculture’s Advisory Committee on Plants and Animals last November, said Jonathan Ho, acting inspection and compliance section chief for the DOA’s Plant Quarantine Branch.

The Plant Quarantine Branch handles importation and inspection of nondomestic animal species in addition to plants, insects and microorganisms.

“It’s all specific to the species and the use,” Ho said about permitting, describing the process as “kind of complicated.”

Tigers are allowed in the state only for exhibition and research purposes. The number of permits issued for animals to be exhibited, as at municipal zoos, is “very few,” Ho said. “You could count it on your fingers.”

The Advisory Committee on Plants and Animals approval of the cubs’ permit came after an initial deferral in October, when ex-officio voting member Neil Reimer expressed concern about the barrier that separates the tiger enclosure from the public. Mizuno said she subsequently updated the application with more specific measurements and photos.

“The tiger (permit) went to the board because the (enclosure) conditions were really old,” Ho said. “We took a look at them, and we wanted to make sure that the conditions were adequate.”

The inspection took place late last year.

“Panaewa obviously showed that their enclosure was adequate to contain the tigers and protect public safety,” Ho said.

In the February newsletter published by Friends of the Panaewa Zoo, Mizuno wrote that following the Board of Agriculture’s meeting, the import permit was issued the next day.

The Friends group paid for the refurbishment of the tiger enclosure. Group resident Pat Englehard could not be reached by press time regarding the total cost of improvements.

The effort to bring tigers to Panaewa has been criticized by the state chapter of the Humane Society of the United States throughout the process, largely because the zoo is not accredited by the American Zoological Association.

“Our organization doesn’t generally oppose zoos, it’s just that zoos that aren’t accredited (by the AZA) aren’t operating at the highest standards,” HSUS director Inga Gibson said. “We think that rather than the additional moneys and staff which are needed to (care for) highly complex, endangered species, the zoo should really focus on bringing its existing standards up to par, providing quality care for its existing animals.”

Hawaii’s only other zoo, the Honolulu Zoo, is AZA-accredited.

In testimony to the advisory committee, Mizuno wrote she is a professional associate member of the AZA and that the zoo participates in AZA Species Survival Plan for binturongs and lemurs (binturongs from Panaewa have been sent to Zoo Boise and Minnesota Zoo, both of which are AZA-accredited).

Mizuno said Panaewa “may look towards that (AZA) accreditation sometime in the future,” and would be working toward accreditation from a different body, the Zoological Association of America, in the meantime.

Humane Society of the United States also raised concern about Great Cats World Park and its owner, Craig Warner, whom Gibson described as having a “tumultuous history” of violating the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Welfare Act.

In 1993, Warner was found guilty of beating a tiger with a two-by-four, and received a suspended jail sentence.

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

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Alligators coming, too

Bengal tigers won’t be the only new arrivals at Panaewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens this spring.

Two American alligators also are set to take up residence in early April.

It’s been decades since the zoo had alligators on display, although the crocodilian species was one of the first to be exhibited at Panaewa. Zoo director Pam Mizuno said Friday the zoo got its first alligator from the Honolulu Zoo.

The new pair is from Colorado Gators Reptile Park, located in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.

According to a July 2014 article by the Los Angeles Times, more than 300 rescued alligators live at the park.

Colorado is not the obvious location for an alligator park, but the ponds at the facility are kept hot year-round by geothermal springs in the area, allowing the reptiles to regulate their temperatures.

Mizuno said the new Panaewa pair will live in the zoo’s refurbished feral pig enclosure. The feral pigs now are in the zoo’s former pygmy hippo enclosure.

“We had a whole bunch of renovations,” Mizuno said.

Funding for the projects came from the Friends of the Panaewa Zoo group. The county supplied additional materials.