Dear Colleagues,

This is to greet you as a „new-old” director of Budapest Zoo & Botanical Garden. After a four year service in the Hungarian Government as Minister for the Environment, I returned to Budapest Zoo and to the international zoo community. Director Dr. Ilma Bogsch returned to her former retired position and I continue what I practiced between 1994 and 2003.

Budapest Zoo is honoured to host the meetings of WAZA and CBSG in Budapest in August. Very much hope that you all will get familiar with the hospitality of our staff and enjoy remarkable details of our monument zoo, will fall in love with the wonderful capital of Hungary and the country herself. Addition to the excellent and fully packed professional conference program, we offer you high quality leisure activities, pre and post conference tours.

During yours stay you can get acquainted with the first rhino born after artificial insemination, a nicest Hagenbeck style artificial rock structure and other beautiful monuments of zoo history or, during the tours, the great bustards and a hundred of free ranging Przewalski horses in the Puszta grassland in Eastern Hungary. Please let me know any of your special demands whilst visiting Hungary in advance at your earliest convenience.

Looking forward to meet all of you in Budapest,

Sincerely, your old friend,

Prof. Miklós Persányi
Director General
Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden

Dear Colleagues,

It is a great honour for me to invite the zoo-experts from all over the world to Budapest in 2007. Hosting the 62nd Annual Conference of WAZA is a great pleasure and a great challenge too. The high quality programme is always a guarantee of success, but a hosts task to make the event really unforgettable – I promise we will do our best.

The conference will focus on linking ex situ and in situ conservation of native species. Conservation knows no frontiers but has to be an organic part of every country’s culture. Zoos, known as „PR agencies of nature”, can give great examples and important background for this mission.

On behalf of the 140 years old Budapest Zoo I look forward to welcoming you in Budapest in August 2007.

Ilma Bogsch
General Director
Budapest Zoo