Paul Calvert questions Liz Kaufman who is staff veterinarian at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, about their conservation work and education programmes.

Paul: What sort of animal and plant life do you have here that is mentioned in the Bible?

Liz: There are animals that are mentioned in the Bible by name and then there are animals that are not mentioned. Monkeys are mentioned, they are not endemic to the area, but they are mentioned so we have many kinds of monkeys. Of the animals that are mentioned directly in the Bible, we have fallow deer and sand cats. There is a lot of discussion about what exactly the Hebrew translation for some of those animals are, so we have quotes from the Bible, from the Old Testament, next to the cages of those that are specifically mentioned in the Bible.

Paul: Where do your animals come from?

Liz: A few of them have come with us from the old zoo and are still with us. Tammy, who is our big hippopotamus is well over 50, she came from the old zoo. We have black panthers, Ruth and Boaz, their names are biblical. Panthers were in this area, leopards also. Lions we get from other zoos who have a surplus, we have them either on breeding loan, bought, or they are just given from zoo to zoo as trades.

It has become very international to ship animals, we have shipped many giraffes to Greek islands and to the Singapore zoo. They went by ship with a keeper to Singapore, so there is a lot of international trade in animals, none of our animals are caught from the wild, they are all zoo bred.

Paul: You are just on the outskirts of Jerusalem and very close to Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian area. Has the Zoo become a bridge between the different communities?

Liz: One of the things that we are most proud of is that we are a facility in Jerusalem that is not just open, but welcoming to all of the major religions of this area. At any given time you will see religious Palestinians walking around with religious Jews. There are religious Christians but they aren't in any sort of religious dress that you would recognise.

We have special events and everyone is welcome, everyone feels welcome. Our staff is very mixed, our staff represents everybody, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, non-affiliated and secular. You name it everybody is welcome.

Paul: Is education important to the zoo and what kind of educational programmes do you run?

Liz: We have a whole education department. We have children's groups during the year; we have summer programmes and we have programmes just for the aquarium. The summer programmes are in the zoo and the aquarium; the aquarium has its own educational staff.

One of the major goals of the zoo is education. You can't have conservation without education, so education is huge. If you take a look at the signage that is around the zoo and the aquarium, it's all about education. We try to give as much information as we can about the animal, like where it came from or the problems that it is facing in the world.

Paul: You have a green team at the zoo, tell us about that.

Liz: We have a number of different teams. We have animal enrichment, behavioural enrichment teams, we have green teams, we have staff support teams and all of these teams are voluntary.

The green team is responsible for encouraging bottles to be put in recycling bins, cans, bottles and paper, they collect it all and arrange for the recycling organisation to come. Any money that we make is fed back into the animal enrichment programme, or the recycling programme for more advertising or anything else we need.