EMERGENCY UPDATE!!

Hello Everyone,

I am so sorry that I have not posted in a long time, but I promise I will do better. My excuse is the uncertainty of the future of our beautiful Cypress Gardens. Have you seen the news? Well if you haven't been reading the paper or seen the small blurb on the news, County Council is about to lay off half of our staff and get rid of the majority of the animals. All of the 13 species of crocodilians will be gone! Anything that is not native may be GONE! PEDRO in not native and therefore GONE! The amazing parrots are not native, the ginormous anacondas, the beautiful fly-river turtle, the long slender-snouted Tomistoma all GONE! The Berkeley County Council believes that Berkeley County no longer wants to pay $5.00 per tax payer to keep the only amazing thing Berkeley County owns. They think that you no longer want bragging rights to the most extraordinary place in all the world. I will look for the Post and Courier article and post it for you. They say they will be trading Crocodile Isle for something more lucrative, like another rental facility building. I am not saying anything out of line here, it was posted in the paper. http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/mar/11/cypress_gardens_crocs_could_feel_budget_33465/
The project of covering over crocodile isle and making it a formal gardens and gutting a rat infested reptile building will cost ( I can't even guess) a lot of money. What if they send all the animals away and realize that they don't have the money for the new proposed "renovations" Will the park cease to exist, will they end up getting rid of all the fish and native reptiles because people will quit going.

Please write County Council, get the news out, get to the facts before you let this happen. This will all be decided soon and it seems that Berkeley County is even burying the hearings about it on there website making it almost impossible to find... HMMMM!

I quote a recent visitor to Cypress Gardens, " My wife and I would probably still come see the gardens and take a boat ride, although you can do that anywhere in Charleston, but we would never get our teenage kids to hang out with us without the animal exhibits - and to me that is priceless!"

Life's a Swamp