Ikeda city, in Osaka pref, JAPAN, has its municipal zoo, ‘Satsukiyama Zoo‘. The zoo has three wombats now. The number is half of the number of wombats in Japan. The zoo accomplished the breeding of wombats in 1992 and 1993.
These years, the zoo wants to welcome young wombat(s) from Australia. It costs 28 million yen (as well as approx. 250 thousand US dollar) to carry wombat(s) from Australia, to renovate wombats’ house, and so on. On Dec 1, 2016, Ikeda city announced [ref source *1] that they budgeted 13 million yen for these. The rest was 15 million yen.
On Jan 6, 2017, The mayor of Ikeda city, KURATA Kaoru, announced [ref source *2] on his daily report on the city website that the amount of donation reached 15 million yen on the end of 2016. Then he expressed his thanks and announced that 10 million will be used to renovate wombats’ house and the rest will be used to receive wombat(s) scheduled this (:2017) fall.
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Ikeda city is a sister-city of Launceston city, Tasmania state, AUSTRALIA, since 1965.
Satsukiyama Zoo is consulting with Trowunna Wildlife park in Tasmania since about Jun of 2016. In this consulting, they recognized it’s necessary to renovate wombats’ house. One of the renovation is changing metal mesh surrounding the wombats’ garden to strengthen glass. The renovation cost was estimated 23 million yen. Added to the pre-recognized necessary fund (5 million yen, to carry a wombat), the totally necessary fund became 28 million yen.
In Aug of 2015, Satsukiyama Zoo made their own Japanese pop-music group ‘Keeper Girls‘ for raising funds in order to invite a young wombat. The group released thier music CD ‘Song of Wombat‘ in Dec of 2015. The total profit of activities of the group, as of the end of Nov, 2016, is 3.9 million yen (the fore-mentioned donation, 15 million yen, is including this 3.9 million yen).
The song of Keeper Girls, Song of Wombat.