Kharkiv Zoo
Kharkiv Zoological Park, Kharkiv Zoo
Ukraine, Kharkiv
Kharkiv Zoological Park is a state zoo in Kharkiv. The oldest in Ukraine, the third oldest in the Russian Empire, the twentieth in the world. It was opened in 1896, for visitors in 1903. It is located in the Nagorny district, in the Shevchenko garden. Postal address - st. Sumy, 35.
The founding date of the Kharkiv Zoological Garden is considered to be 1896, when an exhibition of domestic animals and birds was organized on an area of two hectares rented from the University Garden. Later, the exposition was replenished with wild animals, which were brought to Kharkov by residents of the surrounding villages. Then a “silk farm” was created on the territory of the exhibition and an apiary of the beekeeping society was located. In 1906, as reported by the Kharkov Provincial Gazette, the construction and equipment of the main building of the aquarium, arranged in the University Garden (on the territory occupied by the poultry house), was completed. In 1911, the South Russian Society for Acclimatization decided to set up a zoo in Kharkov, similar to the one in Moscow. The Society financed the construction of winter premises and summer enclosures, the purchase of wild animals and birds, some of which came from the Askania-Nova reserve.
During the Civil War, the zoo was destroyed. In 1921, the zoo began to be restored - buildings and enclosures were repaired, ornamental, melliferous, medicinal and technical plants were planted, and the exposition of animals was restored. In May 1922, the Kharkov zoo in the capital, more often called the park, was again open to visitors. The entrance ticket cost one hundred thousand rubles in Soviet signs at the rate of spring 1922. All proceeds were used to replenish and expand the collection and improve the zoo. By the 1930s, the territory of the zoo was 22 hectares, as it is now. In 1928, a whole trainload of animals arrived from Weimar Germany to Kharkov, among which were a lion, a leopard, a llama, a kangaroo, mongooses, monkeys, parrots, barnacle geese and many others. Swans, pelicans and about a hundred species of waterfowl were brought from Transcaucasia. A 2400 square meter pond was built in the ravine for geese, swans, flamingos and other waterfowl.
In the 1930s, a "mountain aviary" was built at the zoo - a landscaped area with artificial slides, where tours, goitered gazelles, mouflons lived in conditions closest to natural ones. An elephant house, a monkey house, a poultry house, pens for ungulates were built. Before the war, there were over five thousand animals in the zoo. From the 1920s to 1942, N. P. Ewald was the permanent director of the zoo.
German troops captured Kharkov on October 23-24, 1941. On January 1, 1942, llamas, hyenas, brown and polar bears, dingoes, guinea pigs, wild boars, rhea, emu, parrots, golden and Caucasian pheasants, deer, fallow deer, camels, zebu, ponies, donkeys, canaries, rabbits and chickens bred for sale. On May 1, 1942, with the improvement of the situation on the front for the Germans, the zoo was opened to visitors and was very popular with the population: the entrance ticket was cheap, an orchestra played on Sundays, and even polar bears remained alive. In mid-August 1943, after their defeat near Belgorod, the Germans shot some of the remaining animals, as if on a hunt. Some of the animals died of starvation because they were not fed. At the time of liberation, on August 23, 1943, the zoo had survived: four bears, five monkeys and one wolf. More than five thousand animals died.
In the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the state annually allocated hundreds of thousands of rubles from the budget for the maintenance of the zoo and the purchase of new animals, and in the late 1980s the zoo took a leading place in the Ukrainian SSR. In 1986, the Kharkov Zoo was supposed to be greatly expanded. In the long-term plans for the development of Kharkov and the general plan of the city, the zoo was allocated large areas - 120 hectares - in the Lesopark area, between the village of Zhukovsky and the ring road, to the right of the Belgorod highway. The cost of building a new zoo was estimated at 70 million Soviet rubles. But the times of “reforms” came, as a result of which, in the early 1990s, the number of visitors decreased many times over (in the prosperous 1990 there were one and a half million of them, of which half were children), then there were problems with financing and feeding animals, their number decreased somewhat .
The zoo preserves and studies representatives of the wild fauna of all continents of the Earth. In addition, the Kharkov Zoo is a cultural and educational institution. It provides excursions for children and adults, lectures, consultations on the protection of wildlife and nature in general. Lectures and demonstrations of animals are held in kindergartens.
