Workmen at Chester Zoo have waded through water to get to grips with a 500-metre-long cable cutting through a new development at Chester Zoo.
The cable, weighing almost half a tonne, will be used to pull 14 boats around a river trip when Islands – the biggest zoo expansion in UK history - opens to the public in June.
Islands will recreate habitats from six areas in South East Asia - Panay, Papua, Bali, Sumatra, Sumba and Sulawesi - and provide a home for a number of animals classed as critically endangered in the wild, including Sumatran tigers, Sumatran orangutans and Visayan warty pigs.
Gareth Simpson, the zoo’s operations implementation manager, said: “Installing the boat cable is one of many, many challenging tasks we’ve already tackled on this exciting, but incredibly complex, project.
“The team from the zoo battled the elements, deep mud and high water to lay the cable. Such is the level of expertise needed on this project, an expert from Germany who has worked with cable cars, then joined us to advise on how to connect it all up to the mechanical wheels.
“The 14 boats that will be towed by the cable weigh over 11 tonnes and can carry up to 238 visitors at any one time, so installing it was no mean feat. I’m pleased to say that it’s all now starting to come together nicely and we can’t wait for June.”
The boat trip, labelled the Lazy River Boat Journey, is just one part of the Islands development, which the zoo says will make visitors feel like they are on their own conservation expedition.
