Sunday, April 18, 1999

Fabulous digs await new residents

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BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        How hot a commodity are manatees? This hot: By mid-June, there will be six in Ohio, living in $14 million worth of housing.

        Three weeks after Cincinnati opens Manatee Springs, Columbus Zoo will open Manatee Coast with four orphaned or injured manatees.

        Coast is a 23,000-square-foot, $10 million facility, says Doug Warmolts, assistant director of living collections at Columbus Zoo.

        Centerpiece of Manatee Coast is a 250,000-gallon manatee tank. .

        The Columbus manatee flotilla will sail in from Orlando and Tampa: Two from the Living Seas exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center; one from Sea World Orlando, and one from Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo.

        Columbus will transport its four the same way Cincinnati will transport its two: Cranes, fork lifts and a cargo plane.

        “Our goal is the same as Cincin nati,” Mr. Warmolts said: “To present and talk about manatees in the context of their ecosystem.”

        Like Cincinnati's exhibit, the Columbus facility is a glass-roofed enclosure full of tropical plants and wildlife. It includes live mangrove trees, tropical fish and water birds.

        Tentative opening for Manatee Coast is June 11. Columbus Zoo is north of the city in the community of Powell.