Animal Adventure park announced Saturday that it would be canceling the transfer of Tajiri the giraffe to the Carolina Wildlife Conservation Park in North Carolina. The park announced two months ago that Tajiri would be transferred at the end of October.
"In the interest of maintaining honesty, integrity and transparency, Animal Adventure Park must announce that it has unexpectedly canceled the transfer of Tajiri the Giraffe," the park wrote in a Facebook post. They did not specify why Tajiri would not be transferred, but said that "requirements and deadlines were not satisfied in the given time frame."
The park said that they came to the decision late Thursday night. "The safety, security and welfare of our animals remains priority number one, and we feel it is best at this time, to keep Tajiri in place, at home, at Animal Adventure Park," they wrote.
Animal Adventure Park will begin construction Monday on a new building and future exhibition for Tajiri and a possible second giraffe or companion animal. They said that the project would take three to four weeks to complete. The construction of Tajiri's new home will delay the opening for the Wilds of Asia expansion, which was scheduled for a 2019 opening.
Around 1.2 million people on Youtube and 800,000 people on Facebook watched the birth of Tajiri live on April 15, 2017. He is April the giraffe's fourth calf. His move to a new building will give April time to prepare for the birth of her fifth calf, which is expected in 2019. Her fifth birth will also be live streamed.