KL Bird Park Malaysia Travel Reviews
I visited this place recently on my way to Sabah, as its advertising boasted being the largest walk in aviary in the world. I have to say straight away I am not a fan of zoos of any kind! I have no doubts no animal can be happy kept locked in an enclosure of any size, often without interaction of other animal species and only to be fed/looked after by the mercy of resources available of the place concerned and indeed the level of ability, education and understanding of its employees in animal husbandry or indeed zoology to the needs of the animals emotionally as well dietary – and this place is definitely no exception!!
To be fair, parts of this place are what one could refer to as acceptable housing conditions (as far as zoos go) for some of its birds where there are large open areas where many species are free to fly about and interact ‘within the park’, but other parts in particular its internal enclosures are unacceptable. One prime example being the Brahminy Kite enclosure, an ‘A’ frame design about 14 meters long by about 3.5 meters across the base, within it were 9 adult Brahminy kites all completely despondent and motionless. Even keeping 1 Brahminy in an enclosure this size is cruel let alone 9 of them. There are other examples of inadequate lodging especially including the housing of its cockatiels, owls, parrots, lorikeets and vulturine guineafowl.
Further, the bulk of the staff, including the conspicuously non-interested entry fee staff, are unfriendly not to mention unhelpful and virtually none of the ground staff I would suggest possess any of the skills or education I mentioned in the opening paragraph to justify being employed in such a position. I witnessed an old lady from a group of Chinese tourists demonstrating to a young girl how to poke a stick through the cage to tease and harass the bird inside, in this case being an ostrich. A nearby park attendant did nothing to stop this disgraceful display and pretended not to notice and I had to intervene which almost led to a physical altercation with male parties of this group. The hospitality staff in the park’s rather expensive restaurant are just as uninterested as the ground staff.
On exiting this place, unless you drove yourself there or are prepared to walk a very long distance to ‘try’ and find a ‘non controlled’ taxi, you will have no choice but to submit to the local taxi mafia at the exit/entry and pay almost triple the price to get back to your hotel as it costs to get there.
Besides the uninterested attitude of about 75% of the staff, the poor internal housing of some birds as already mentioned and the rip off taxi service on exit, I am afraid I cannot recommend this place. In fact I suggest it should be closed down temporarily and redesign and sound renovations for the internal housing of its birds should be implemented and the staff need to be properly trained and educated in at least a basic animal husbandry course and most certainly lessons in manners and how to smile would be an investment.
Rod Rice
Nature & Travel Books