A red panda has escaped from the Adelaide Zoo, sparking a two-day search.
Key points:
A red panda escaped from Adelaide Zoo on Friday
It was found up a tree at the adjacent Botanic Park on Sunday morning
The panda was retrieved on Sunday afternoon
The seven-year-old red panda named Ravi escaped from its enclosure at the zoo, in the city’s CBD, on Friday.
He was found up a tree at the nearby Botanic Park on Sunday, however, keepers have spent the day trying to put him down using food, but without success.
A tranquilliser was used this afternoon, and keepers surrounded the tree with blankets to catch him.
Adelaide Zoo director Dr Phil Ainsley said keepers tried to entice Ravi down using bamboo and sweet corn, but were unsuccessful.
“Based on the advice from our vets we made the decision that we’d look at darting him … [we] finally got a dart into him and then just had to wait about 15 minutes just for the drug to take effect.
“Our amazing vet team and animal keepers were underneath with some blankets and managed to capture him as he dropped.”
Dr Ainsley said the zoo would conduct a review into Ravi’s enclosure to identify how he escaped before he is returned to his new home.
A red panda in the Adelaide Zoo’s climbing tunnel.(ABC News: Ethan Rix)
He said the Department of Primary Industries and Regions SA (PIRSA) was alerted when Ravi went missing on Friday but the public was not notified as Ravi was deemed a “low risk” to the environment and humans.
Dr Ainsley said Ravi’s adventure was the first mammal escape from the zoo in recent years.
The focus now, he said, was on Ravi’s wellbeing, after he had only arrived at the zoo last week.
“He’s now just being transferred back into the zoo where he’ll spend the next couple of days in our animal health department just getting a check-up and making sure he’s OK,” he said.
“Obviously, being in Botanic Park, there’s a lot of fig trees, so probably he has had a bit of a munch on some figs that were in the trees but [he] will be a hungry panda.”
Residents living upstream from Lismore say faults in the rain and river gauge network deprived them of potentially life-saving data as a catastrophic flood hit the New South Wales Northern Rivers in February.
Key points:
Crucial equipment failed because it was poorly located, while key rainfall data was missed or distorted due to a lack of maintenance
Flood hydrologist Duncan Dey says the whole gauge network needs to be reassessed
A report into the floods found information from the Bureau of Meteorology was “incorrect and out of date”
There are 27 rainfall and 19 stream level gauges in the Wilsons River catchment that provide data to the Bureau of Meteorology to help predict flood heights and develop forecasts.
Residents also monitor the data directly via the bureau’s website.
When the February flood hit, one rain gauge was already broken and a further two rain gauges and six stream gauges stopped transmitting data during the event.
ABC’s 7.30 can reveal that crucial equipment failed because it was poorly located, while key rainfall data was missed or distorted due to a lack of maintenance.
When the February floods hit the Northern Rivers, one rain gauge was already broken and two more stopped transmitting data.(abcnews)
The revelations follow the release of a NSW parliamentary report examining the flood response, which found information from the Bureau of Meteorology was “incorrect and out of date”, and called for the bureau to review its rain data infrastructure to ensure rain and flood gauges were appropriately placed, maintained and updated.
Local resident Annie Kia says the failures of the gauge network caused “much distress” among her upstream neighbours, who were among the first to witness the scale of the disaster firsthand.
“The upstream people knew that a catastrophe was hurtling toward Lismore in the night, and felt very frustrated that they could not get their message across,” she said.
‘People downstream really need to know’
The gauges near Nan Nicholson’s home stopped working as floodwaters rose.(ABC News: Ella Archibald-Binge)
Nan Nicholson’s property is nestled in the hinterland north of the town, flanked by two creeks that feed into the Wilsons River catchment.
“If it’s torrential rain up above, we know that Lismore is going to really cop it,” she said.
As a low pressure system moved south on the night of February 27, she was keeping a close eye on the local rain and stream gauge data, which she and her neighbors rely on for real-time information to decide when to evacuate.
The stream gauge said the nearby creek was “steady.”
However, that was in stark contrast to what was unfolding in her backyard: The creek was rapidly closing in on her home, and the hammering rain showed no signs of easing.
She could see the flood was shaping up to be far worse than initial predictions of a peak around the 2017 height of 11.59 meters.
Rocky Creek, one of the feeder creeks upstream from Lismore.(ABC News: Ella Archibald-Binge)
“You could watch it within the minute rising very, very rapidly, so I just didn’t believe [the data]and that really filled me with dread,” she said.
“I thought, ‘People downstream really, really need to know this, and they’re not getting that information’.”
Ms Nicholson and her husband made a narrow escape in the night.
By the time they left, the nearby river gauge was not transmitting any data at all.
The rain gauge failed a short time later.
“Because of our knowledge of the area, we felt prepared to some degree, but it would have helped a great deal to know that that river gauge … was telling the truth,” she said.
“It’s a basic government responsibility to deliver us the data that we need to make decisions about our survival.”
‘Whole network needs to be reassessed’
Duncan Dey says rainfall modeling “only works if you’ve got good data”.(ABC News: Ella Archibald-Binge)
Duncan Dey is a flood hydrologist and Byron Shire councilor who used to install and maintain rain and stream gauges.
I have identified key flaws in the gauging station near Ms Nicholson’s property.
He said a shed housing equipment that sends data to the weather bureau should have been located on higher ground.
“We know that the shed went underwater, and I’m stunned, actually, because it went underwater by three or four meters, which means that it was wrongly located in the first place,” he said.
“The whole network needs to be reassessed for whether the machinery shed is high enough above the flood levels.”
Duncan Dey and Annie Kia inspect a rain gauge. Mr Dey was surprised to find a tree growing over the top.(abcnews)
Mr Dey said he was also “shocked” to see a tree overhanging the top of the rain gauge.
“So it’s not actually measuring the right amount of rain. It’s completely non-standard,” he said.
“We now have computer modeling that works really well on taking rainfall, putting it into a catchment and working out what happens downstream — the modeling is fantastic, but it only works if you’ve got good data.”
A BOM spokesperson said the outages did not impact the bureau’s forecasts and warnings during the February flood, and that redundancy has been built into the observation system.
However, the bureau is reviewing its infrastructure across the catchment.
Council requests more gauges
Lismore City Council general manager John Walker says the gauges are maintained every three months, or more often if a fault occurs. (ABC North Coast: Bruce MacKenzie)
The state gauge network is jointly managed by local, state and federal governments, along with some private agencies.
Lismore City Council owns the gauges that malfunctioned in February.
General manager John Walker said all but two of the gauges have been fixed, with parts on order from overseas, while one was broken prior to the flood because a technician could not get access to the site due to ground conditions.
Mr Walker said all existing gauges were located above the 1974 flood levels and the equipment that had been repaired has been relocated to higher ground, above the 2022 flood height.
He said the gauges were maintained every three months, or more often if a fault occurs.
The council’s request for more gauges, he said, was being assessed by the NSW Planning and Environment Department, after it was initially rejected in February.
A spokesperson for the department said it was awaiting completion of the council’s flood plain management plan before it could review the funding application.
Resident Annie Kia is among many — including local councils and MPs — calling for a single agency to own and maintain the gauge network.
“It’s clear to me that the system is not fit for purpose,” she said.
“We need to have some government system that manages these creek and rain gauges, and it seems to me it would be better if it was one agency — as long as it’s one, competent agency.”
