Camille Clarke

Ten new flamin­goes are now bright­en­ing up the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo in Port-of-Spain.They will be un­der quar­an­tine for the next four weeks and then join the ten flamin­goes that have been there for the past two years.Flamin­goes, which are part of T&T's nat­ur­al fau­na, have been hunt­ed out from their nat­ur­al habi­tat in the Ca­roni swamp.

In an in­ter­view, pres­i­dent of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety Gupte Lutch­me­di­al said the quar­an­tine was nor­mal be­fore an­i­mals were put in cages at the zoo."We got the first set of flamin­goes from the zoo two years ago and as soon as Africa (a habi­tat at the zoo) is built we will be re­ceiv­ing more an­i­mals from oth­er zoos around the world. We are hap­py to have the San Diego zoo as our part­ners," he said.

Lutch­me­di­al said with the in­crease in the num­ber of flamin­goes it will be pos­si­ble for the birds to breed and even­tu­al­ly be in­tro­duced back in­to the wild.He said the zoo had no­ticed there were two flamin­goes left in the nat­ur­al habi­tat in the swamp.Joseph Kuhn, a keep­er from the Bird De­part­ment in San Diego, came to T&T to see the fa­cil­i­ties and up­grade the skills of the keep­ers at the zoo.

"We came two years ago and trained them on the flamin­goes that they re­ceived. There are five males and five fe­males," he said.Kuhn said the birds are of age to breed and may live to be 50.