BRANCHING OUT Safari Park Keeps Tree-Care Staff Busy


Visitors to San Diego’s Zoo Safari Park have a chance to experience faraway places, such as a Nairobi village, a Kilimanjaro safari and an African aviary. And animals — including giraffes, rhinoceros, elephants, warthogs and cheetahs — and birds — including condors, shoebill storks and lorikeets — they seldom have an opportunity to see. There are hundreds of species of trees and plants, ranging from the African thorn tree to the zigzag plant.


The 1800-acre (728.4 ha) wildlife preserve is home to 3500 animals representing 400 species. It is also a botanical garden with more than a million plants. The animals mingle together in a semi-arid environment much like they do in their native Africa and Asia.


The park and the San Diego Zoo are operated by the Zoological Society of San Diego. The Safari Park attracts more than 2 million visitors annually.


For tree-care professionals, the Safari Park is also an experience few in the business ever encounter — branches being snapped off by the tongue of a giraffe or tree trunks battered by a 5000-pound (2268 kg) rhino. Plus, you have to work among giant-sized animals.


The wind preceding the firestorm of 2007 took down about half the trees in the 300-acre (121.4 ha) rhino field; some were 70-foot-tall (21.3 m) cottonwoods. “We used our Vermeer®


BC1500 brush chipper


for days cleaning up,” says Javier Quiroz, lead arborist. “The rhinos were very curious about what we were doing, so we had to constantly move them away with our trucks.”


6 | vermeer.com


“We process a lot of materials and we want to do it quickly and safely. That’s why the brush chipper we use has to be productive and safe.”


— Javier Quiroz Lead Arborist


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