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Komodo Dragon Cecilia arrives at the Adelaide Zoo





The latest news from my friends and family in my home town of Adelaide in South Australia is that Cecilia the young Komodo Dragon has arrived, is out of quarantine, and in her new enclosure.  

 

Cecilia the Komodo Dragon is the Adelaide Zoo’s first ever Komodo Dragon. 

 

She came out of quarantine in late June 2020, when the zoo re-opened after lockdown closure due to the Coronavirus pandemic. She is in the Reptile House, because she is a reptile – a lizard.

 

Cecilia the Komodo Dragon actually arrived at the Adelaide Zoo late in 2019 and was in the usual quarantine program before release into her enclosure. So, visitors had not seen her until June 2020. 

 

She arrived from the Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic where they have a breeding program. 

 

She is quite small at the moment because she is only 4 years old and not fully grown. She will eventually grow to over 2 metres long.

 

In the future – in about two years – the Adelaide Zoo intends to acquire a male Komodo Dragon in the hope that they will breed. 

 

The Komodo Dragon is vulnerable to extinction in the wild, so that’s why the Adelaide Zoo, and other zoos around the world, want to breed them to build up their numbers. Their native home is a small island, Komodo Island, in Indonesia, where there is a large protected area for the dragons. Staff work in cooperation with animal conservation and preservation groups globally to protect the species.


Cecilia, the Komodo Dragon, at the Adelaide Zoo



And here are some photos I took of adult Komodo Dragons at the London Zoo in July 2018.





The Komodo Verses by Martina Nicolls






MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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