Gaziantep Zoo is Turkiye's largest, Europe's third and fourth largest zoo in the world by its area and hosting for species. The zoo is located on approximately 1.5 million square meters green area, including wild animals such as lions, pumas, and bears as well as hosts for 10 thousand animals from 350 species in Safari Park.
The zoo, which hosts over 3.5 million visitors every year, is crowded with visitors as well as at the weekends.
Celal Özsöyler, President of the Department of Natural Life Protection of the Metropolitan Municipality stated that 2 million people visited Gaziantep Zoo in the first 8 months of this year, which welcomed more than 3.5 million visitors in 2017. Özsöyler added that they are aiming to raise the number of visitors to 4 million people.
Özsöyler stated that the number of visitors to the zoo is over 20 thousand on weekends and that they will soon establish a new Tropical Butterfly Center within the zoo garden and about 20 butterflies will fly in these tropical plants.
"We have 350 animals' pieces in the zoo with 7,500 animals"
Stating that Gaziantep Zoo is Turkiye's largest, Europe's third and the world's fourth-largest zoo, Özsöyler said, "We have about 350 species in the zoo with 7,500 animals. However, we are welcoming visitors with a new project every year to our Gaziantep zoo. We have the Zoological and Natural Museum, Safari parks, aquariums in the zoo will also open a Tropical Butterfly Center."
Visitors are interested in zoo
"I found the zoo garden in Gaziantep very beautiful, especially my daughter is very attracted to it," said Aslı Turay, who has visited the zoo with her family. "Of course we always see animals on TV, but seeing them alive here is different," she added.
Ilker Bebe, another zoo's visitor said he had visited other zoos in Turkiye but liked this one more than others. Erve Naz Bebe, who said that she came to visit the zoo with her father, said lions and tigers took her attention the most, added that she wanted also Van cat to exist in the zoo.
Hatice Öğüt, who came from Adana said, "Gaziantep Zoo is very nice and clean and beautiful. Gaziantep is well maintained and I like it."
Mehmet Şahin said, "We came here to see the animals and to visit them, I found this place very beautiful, I really did not expect anything like this. But seeing animals alive is a very different feeling, and there is a lot of difference between what we see here and what we see on television."
ILKHA