When I arrive at Chester Zoo’s Islands for the first time, the gates have not yet opened to the public and I am treated to an unhurried tour of this vast new exhibit.
The Visayan warty pigs stretch out in the sunshine on the banks of the Lazy River with the beautiful Bali starling’s song crisp in the air, while the cheeky Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys are causing happy havoc in their new home.
I am here to meet Gerardo Garcia, the man who escorted the stunning Sunda gharial crocodiles to Islands. Garcia starts our Islands tour by telling me how he transported two members of one of the world’s rarest species of crocodile to Chester, from their former home in the south of France. “Not easy,” he admits with a wry smile.
Although Garcia is curator of frogs, fishes, bugs and snakes, and is babysitting a tank of Asian buffalo leeches, he knows every animal in Islands. Each day, his team works “backstage” to care for Islands’ new species, including tiny vampire crabs and the thousands of fish that will move in to the crocodile pool. Work overlaps across every department at Chester. Gerardo points out a special fish tank in Monsoon Forest; he hopes it will pique the interest of the Sumatran orangutans. Have orangutans ever watched a fish tank before? Gerardo shrugs. “Orangutans are inquisitive,” he says. “It’s probably something that has never been tried before, but it’s good to do something different.”
Within an hour of arriving at Islands, I realise that working here is not a nine-to-five proposition. Garcia is as proud of Chester’s behind the scenes breeding and conservation programmes as he is of the animals on show, and it is clear to me that this aspect of his work is highly personal. Islands’ turtles are the offspring of illegally exported turtles he helped to save in 1985, and he later points out a pair of battered boots in the ranger camp storeroom: they belong to him, remnants of a conservation journey to save Madagascan frogs from a killer fungus.
During my tour, Garcia shows me the wasps, stick insects and spiders waiting patiently to move into Islands. As captivating as the insects are, I am eager to meet the crocodiles. Their glass-fronted pool allows me to get up close to the croc-couple, Frank and Frankie. Garcia taps on the glass and the female responds. “We call her the mermaid,” he says. “She didn’t swim much before, but here, she glides elegantly through the water.”
She certainly takes my breath away, but at the end of my Islands visit, Garcia’s knowledge, experience and care leave the biggest impression.
