The Chomutov Zoopark is one of the younger Czech zoos. It has been founded in the middle of the 1970s by a local enthusiast Walter Markel. He came with the grandiose idea of creating an extensive forest-park at the nature area called the Alum Lake (Kamencové jezero). From modest beginnings, when the forest park did not have the status of a zoo and only less demanding European animals and waterfowl were on display, the complex has rapidly developed to its present form of a modern breeding facility, which is, with its 112 hectares, the largest ZOO in the Czech Republic. Since 2011, the ZOO has also included an open-air museum of an Erzgebirge Mountains village and, since the end of the 1990s, a European safari: enclosed grounds where you can drive among European bison, deer, mouflon and saiga antelope. There are also walk-trough aviaries and nocturnal houses in the ZOO. The biggest attractions are bison, red pandas and seals.
The management of the zoo park came up with the idea of the memorial in the middle of the 1990s. First a memorial plaque commemorating the eradicated species was placed near the unique chestnut orchard from the middle of the 17th century. Then the project of the cemetery had been prepared during sculptor symposia. The sculptures were donated to the Foundation for the Conservation of European Fauna by the authors and they have been loaned to the zoo park free of charge. Another symbolical place with the same message was the joke “enclosure” for the Oil Gobbler (a fictional animal from the ecological student film by Jan Svěrák). After legal disputes with the author of the artwork of the film oil gobbler, Barbora Šalamounová, the zoo park management had to close the enclosure and remove the sculptures.
