Visitors enjoying Turkey's 'genbank'

Dubbed the "living genbank" since it is home to many endangered animals, the Faruk Yalçın Zoo in Darıca close to Istanbul received 400,000 visitors last year. 

Education and Marketing Director Gökmen Aydın said the zoo in the northwestern province of Kocaeli was home to 3,600 animals from 286 species, making it the zoo with the most species in Turkey. 

He said the zoo was established on a botanical park of 8,000 plants from 600 species, allowing visitors to view rare plants as well as animals at the zoo. 

The zoo is home to a number of animals listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. "In order to enter this list, the number of an animal species that can reproduce has to be low. Here, we have 40 species on this Red List. Some of them are the pygmy hippo, bald ibis and black jaguar. Their numbers are very low in nature," Aydın said. 

As well as the animals on the IUCN Red List, Aydın said the Faruk Yalçın Zoo was also home to animals that are not found at any other Turkish zoo. "Among them are the Indian rhinoceros, Aldabra giant tortoise and demoiselle crane, which are now hard to find in nature," he said. 

Aydın said the zoo benefited from being located the centers of two large cities, Istanbul and Kocaeli.

"2016 was very good for us. We hosted nearly 400,000 people, and 10 percent of these people were from Middle Eastern countries. Their interest increases all the time. We believe that we will host more people this year; our goal is to receive 450,000 visitors. The zoo changes every other day, and we make innovations every day. Mostly families with children come here. Children are impressed by the animals and want to come again. Considering this demand,...