If you’ve ever wanted to get seriously close to a Sumatran tiger (without there being a terrible ethical or safety problem in the way) then now is your chance. In addition to International Tiger Day, which falls on Friday, July 29 this year, Taronga Zoo is celebrating the fifth birthday of its incredible Tiger Trek experience. All big cat fans are advised to come by and meet these magnificent feline residents while also helping in their conservation.
Tiger Trek is an entertaining and free experience that is bound to delight kids and adults alike. The experience is included in your ticket to Taronga, and attendees are invited to get into a flight simulator that takes them (very quickly) from Mosman to the Way Kambas National Park in Sumatra.
Upon landing, you walk through an Indonesian-inspired village, meandering down a path past village shops and through a rainforest that looks uncannily like you’re in the Indonesian archipelago. At the end, you will get the chance to see the zoo’s three tiger cubs, who were all born in 2019, as well as their beautiful mother, father, uncle and grandmother.
Sumatran tigers are critically endangered, with just 400 of them left in the world – the six that live at Taronga Zoo represent 1.5% of their entire population. These are scary stats, but as seen through Tiger Trek, all is not lost. Deforestation in Indonesian rainforests has decreased by 75 per cent since the folks over at the zoo began monitoring it in 1990. There has been a steady increase in the consumption of sustainable palm oil worldwide, with shoppers far more aware of the devastation caused by unsustainable palm oil harvesting than ever before.
It's easy to feel helpless when it comes to this stuff, which is why arguably the coolest bit of Tiger Trek is Choice Mart. This end room has been built to look like a supermarket check-out, complete with interactive touch screens that show you exactly which classic supermarket products have unsustainable palm oil in them, allowing you to send an email directly to Australian manufacturers demanding better. So far, 143,000 emails have been sent, and many retailers have made a switch as a result.
Tiger Trek is free and runs in daily sessions at Taronga Zoo from 9.50am to 4pm.
