In receiving this Award I would like to make the following report on the Zoo and Botanical Garden of Jakarta:

In 1976 over 1,500,000 people visited the Jakarta Zoo; this is up from 300,000 five years ago. For the most part these visitors come from Jakarta, but more and more people from other parts of Indonesia are coming to see our collections of plants and animals. Our visitors are mostly from urban areas. The Zoo and Botanical Garden offer them their only contact with "nature." One of the basic objectives of our zoo program is to give visitors as much insight into the natural world as possible while they are with us.

We attempt to do this in a number of ways. We have available guides that take visitors through the zoo in groups and explain to them about the animals and plants they see along the way. We have provided identification labels for the animals and now we have them for the majority of trees and shrubs. We try to display our animals in ways that show affiliation by taxonomic group and in some cases by community. On our large monkey islands for example, the visitor can see primates living together and moving about in semi-natural situations.

All our staff are involved in local conservation efforts; they are always ready to give talks when asked. In Jakarta there is a growing interest among young people to leave the city and to camp in the country on their holidays. They go as school groups and with organizations such as the Boy Scouts. We try hard to reach these groups and to increase their appreciation of the natural world.

The Zoo's senior staff contribute to newspapers through articles they have written or by talking with reporters about Zoo matters. We have found these articles to be a major source of information for the public about animals in Indonesia.

We conduct our education program for the Zoo staff on both a formal and informal basis. Informally our curators work with the keepers to increase their working knowledge about the animals in their care. We actively try to involve keepers in the data gathering process, especially in regard to the breeding program and, of course, in matters of animal health.

Our formal program for the staff includes the use of films and lectures by the senior staff and by outside experts. When showing films we include staff and their families so that interest is maintained on that important front.

In summary, we recognize the vital role that zoos play in conservation education in urban areas. We are attempting to meet this obligation with the resources we have available.