29 May 08

As I mentioned in yesterday's comments, we went to the Tiergarten (zoo) as a Kindergarten field trip. My 2 boys were there and daughter tagged along as she goes to school only until 12, the field trip is until 2pm and there'd be no one to pick her up (because I went with the boys too lol).

I had fun photographing the kids there, this is the side of the Villa itself, few steps down and some steps up will get you to the building posted yesterday.

At noon, just before lunch, we spotted some of the deers. The zoo is a 6,054-acre wildlife preserve, which I assume is owned by earlier royalties as a place for hunting.

True enough, wikipedia says that the Lainzer Tiergarten was created by Emperor Ferdinand I in 1561, when the area was fenced off by a wooden fence, to allow for a private hunting ground. In 1781, the wooden fence was replaced by a stone wall. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the hunting grounds became a public nature preserve, and have remained so ever since, with the exception of the time period of 1940 to 1955, when the entire grounds were closed. An admission fee existed until 1973, after which the preserve became accessible for free.
A large portion of the Lainzer Tiergarten was lost after World War I.

Today the Lainzer Tiergarten is home to between 800 and 1,000 wild boars, 200 to 250 fallow, deer, approximately 700 mouflons, and 80 to 100 red deer (elk).