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As we found out, it's not so little anymore - but it is a lot easier to get around! Jules Vasquez reports:

Jules Vasquez Reporting

The Zoo celebrated its birthday today with the opening of a new visitor's Centre:

Sharon Matola - Founding Director, Belize Zoo
"Overwhelmed is not descriptive enough about how I feel. I'm just - I've seen this place together in the past 4 months with amazing energy, and you know how much it's been raining here, some of the challenges that we've been facing. But, there it is, and I'm just overjoyed. We've really created a spacious, useful building with its own education program and it's own education classroom. It's all handicapped access, and that will allow people - especially school groups which come here - they'll have a classroom with interactive components in it. We're going to have a restaurant, a café, and we're going to have an expanded gift shop. So, I think all those things are going to help us look into the future."

And that center - as well as most of the zoo now - can be accessed by over two thousand five hundred feet of wide concrete pathways:

Sharon Matola
"We call it the SHED project, because stroller, handicapped, elderly and disabled friendly, and we hosted Miss Belize a few days ago, and we know that it's high-heels friendly too. So, anybody can go there, and people who have been restricted in the past, can enjoy what Tony's ingenious abilities have provided, which is a pathway. It's user-friendly. Because it's go air pockets so water soaks through it. It's pretty; it's comfortable. It is just wonderful. They handicap access that we are now opening up for the public, it'll be easier for people to come here."

And while the recent facelift to the visitor center and the walkways are impressive, in the long history of the Zoo, these are just more mileposts:

Sharon Matola
"I came here as an animal trainer, but yeah, I had no idea that I was going to start a zoo. You're right. Well, in the beginning, I did it all by myself. I didn't have this large an animal population here. Now, I've got a keeper staff, Belizeans that are very committed and very earnestly involved in the zoo, and they do it all. 30 years ago, there was nothing. 30 years ago, there was person running it for 2 years. That was me. I still feed some of the animals myself because I still train them. I am still an animal trainer, and that's why, you can come into the zoo and get it with Junior Buddy, the jaguar, and get a kiss because I work with them. So We all work together."

Jules Vasquez
"What is the poundage of food that you have to prepare everyday?"

Sharon Matola
"That's a good question. I've never weighed it, but I'll tell you that we have 15 jaguars that we have to feed. They are meat eaters."

It costs over a million dollars a year to keep the zoo running and the animals fed. It has gone from a one woman operation to a staff of 25 and 20 animals in 1982 to 140 animals today:

Sharon Matola
"And some of the rare species in the, a harpy eagle, no many people can go to any zoo and see the harpy eagle, but you can come to the Belize Zoo, and see a harpy, which is quite unusual. We have jaburu storks; we have animals that are not in other zoos, and I didn't have these animals 30 years ago."

And one of the proudest new additions to that crew is Juniour Lucky who was saved from starvation at a resort in southern Belize:

Sharon Matola
"Our beloved Luck Boi, who is going to be introduced to this group today, we saved him with the help of the Forestry Department. He was nearly dead. Not only did we give him a robust condition as far as physically over time, but we are responsible for Lucky Boi losing all his bad habits. He no longer fence bites. He no longer paces. He's a happy cat, and I think that when you see him, you'll see that."