Park may miss council cash
The Combined Metropolitan Council has recommended that Christchurch local bodies give no money to Orana Park, the wildlife reserve on McLeans Island.
Last year local bodies, following the council’s recommendation. gave S5OOO. It is taken as a matter of course that local bodies will follow this year’s recommendation.
Mr Adrian Johnstone, the president of the South Island Zoological Society, which owns the reserve, is upset over the reason he has been given for the move.
Mr Johnstone said that when the combined council met on Tuesday to discuss bodies deserving local body grants this year, it claimed that Orana Park had not used last year’s grant for its designated purpose. The money given by the five metropolitan local bodies last year totalled S5OOO, and was to be used to build a quarantine block, which would make the society eligible for a licence to import animals. However, xMr Johnstone said, the bulk of the money did not arrive until almost a year after it was promised, and the society was given no official assurance that it was coming. “We could not go ahead on the quarantine block when we had no money, neither could we begin building when we were not assured of its coming,” Mr Johnstone said. The combined council recommended Orana Park for a grant of S5OOO in February last year, but the Christchurch City Council, Riccarton Borough Council, and Heathcote County Council grants did not arrive until early this year. Although the combined
council’s recommendation this year was only a recommendation, it was only a matter of course that the local bodies would follow it, and there would he no grant. “I would seriously like them to reconsider it,” Mr Johnstone said. The society had other means of fund-raising, but the local body grant was one of the Zoological Society’s most welcome aids. Orana Park is on a 200acre site 10 miles northwest of Christchurch. The 40 acre block being developed now will house lions, tigers, camels, bison, otter, wallabies, and ostriches.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34105, 18 March 1976, Page 16
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339Park may miss council cash Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34105, 18 March 1976, Page 16
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