The Digicel Foundation has donated $8.2 million to rehabilitate the fountain and gardens at the Hope Botanical Gardens in St Andrew. According to Digicel Foundation chairman Harry Smith, the Foundation will also be donating an additional $2.1 million towards the Hope Gardens Restoration Project.

Smith, speaking Friday at a ceremony held on the grounds of the gardens to announce the development, also said that in addition to the restoration of the fountain, the Digicel Foundation will be rehabilitating the Shell Band Stand. Work will include repairing the structure of the stand and amphitheatre, as well as the painting and restoring of electrical power to the structure, Smith said.

The repair work, he added, would also entail the installation of adequate audio facilities, the provision of changing rooms and toilet facilities as well as the re-fencing and landscaping of the site. Ornamental shrubs would be planted around the base of the band stand and also along the perimeter of the facility.

Smith said there were plans for the Foundation to team with Digicel to spearhead a dial-in-programme.

“This programme will enable Jamaicans from all walks of life to call or text in, so that they can contribute in their own way to the Hope Gardens Restoration Project,” Smith said.

The cellular telephone company will give 100 per cent of the proceeds from the calls and texts to the rehabilitation project.

Delivering the main address, the junior agriculture minister Errol Ennis congratulated the Foundation for allocating the money to rehabilitate the fountain and the Shell Band Stand.

“All this is to be done in a manner which recognises that we are dealing with a national treasure and which therefore does no visual violence to the spirit of the architectural character and the landscaping,” Ennis said.

The project at hand, he noted, fell within the framework of the Hope Gardens redevelopment plan, which the ministry presented to Cabinet for approval in April 2002. The plan was subsequently given the go-ahead and began five months later.

“Under that redevelopment plan, which also embraces the zoo, we are redeveloping the estate as an attraction, both for Kingstonians and for visitors to the city, whether from the rest of Jamaica or from abroad, and as an outdoor laboratory for the study of native flora and fauna for students of the biological sciences,” Ennis said.

John Thompson, chairman of the Nature Preservation Foundation, the organisation that has assumed responsibility to oversee the redevelopment of the gardens and zoo, outlined plans to restructure the attractions and features at the zoo.

In keeping with the global trend where zoos around the world attempt to replicate the natural habitats in which animals usually live, Thompson said, “the Hope Zoo in the future will be better able to serve the public as a learning experience and not simply as a place of entertainment”.

He said the restructuring of the zoo would involve the creation of three main habitats – the Jamaican paradise, the African outpost, and the American jungles.

The Jamaican paradise is intended to showcase endemic Jamaican animals, such as native brown owls, hummingbirds, iguanas, parrots, and crocodiles. Additionally, birds would also be allowed to fly around in a large aviary, while the public would be given the opportunity to view the crocodiles in their natural surroundings through an underground viewing facility.

The African outpost, Thompson explained, would “reflect the back-to-Africa movement of the Rastafarians and our African forefathers.in this setting would be old world monkeys, house lions, zebras and other hoofed animals”.

The American jungles would “show the ties between Jamaica and the Americas and the commonality of climate and animals”, he said.

This habitat would feature new world monkeys, tapirs, macaws, jaguars, among other animals.

The Hope Zoo currently features 42 species and 356 specimens of animals, including mammals, birds and reptiles.