Osmeña moves to improve city zoo

City residents as well as visitors may soon have the opportunity to see and enjoy the Cebu City Zoo in barangay Kalunasan.

This is because Mayor Tomas Osmeña is now fast tracking its improvement which would be undertaken by a private company.

In fact, the mayor said that it was one of the reasons why he went out of town last week. He visited a zoo in Batangas and a cold storage facility to study how they are being developed and used.

Osmeña, earlier, also revealed his plan to put up a cold storage facility for the vendors in Carbon Public Market.

The mayor is optimistic that the city would realize its plan to improve and expand the city zoo in the coming months. He said he is now having serious talks with businessman Robert Yupangco, the operator of the famous Zoobic Safari in Subic, Zambales.

“Mr. Yupangco is now preparing the proposal to take over the city zoo,” Osmeña said, adding that he visited Yupangco’s zoo in Subic last week and his botanical garden in Mendez, Batangas.

“They will not only do the maintaining, but the developing of the zoo as well,” the mayor said.

Aside from the city zoo, he said he is also planning to give Yupangco a portion of the South Road Properties to be developed into a mini park for smaller animals.

Osmeña said earlier that if plans push through, he wants the city zoo converted into a “world-class” night safari.

And instead of just pigeons, crocodiles and monkeys that are currently housed in the city zoo, he said that the facility will eventually become home to tigers, lions, giraffes, bears, orangutans and other wild animals.

“We’ve been working on this for months... So we would have a real zoo,” Osmeña added.

But he said that this is not for free because Yupangco would be charging those who would want to visit the facility a certain amount as entrance fee. The city may also get a share of the entrance fee, he added.

Last year, the Council passed a resolution authorizing the mayor to return the seven-hectare lot where the zoo is located to the Provincial Capitol because the city can no longer maintain the zoo due to financial constraints.

Prior to that, the city government and the Capitol already agreed on the turnover of the lot when the relationship between the mayor and Governor Gwendolyn Garcia was still good.

But the failed land swap deal resulted in a “word war” between the two officials and Osmeña later changed his mind on the zoo.

“I haven’t signed any document to return the lot yet, and I don’t intend to. I was given authority to turn it over to Capitol, but it’s not obligatory on my part, it doesn’t mean that I have to,” he said earlier. — Wenna A. Berondo/MEEV