Dear Karl Our bird shows are staged in the open. The birds in them are flying freely, which they cannot do in an enclosure. We are sorry you had bad luck with the weather. Unfortunately our shows cannot take place under heavy rain. Thank you for raising your concerns over ticket pricing. This is an issue we are very sensitive to. Let us explain where the money goes. Without us ever touching it, 12 percent of our entrance fee goes straight to the local government, of Bali’s Gianyar Regency, as a tourism tax. Bali Bird Park is by far the biggest payer of the tourism tax in Gianyar. The money is used for local schools, clinics and refuse collection; to tackle Bali’s growing problem with rubbish. A further 10 percent of our entrance charge is distributed to our staff as a performance-related bonus, paid on top of their wages. We hope you saw our staff enjoy high morale. That is because by local standards they are well paid. We also pay 25 percent tax on our operating profit. And three more taxes – staff income tax, sales tax paid to suppliers and service charge – amount to 11 percent of our gross revenue. All this makes us a very big generator of government revenue in an economy dominated by the informal (e.g. non-tax paying) sector. On top of tax and the Park’s operating costs, ticket sales also pay for our bird welfare and conservation programmes. One programme is for the care, rehabilitation and release of injured animals given to us by Indonesia’s Nature Conservation Agency, the BKSDA. The agency has rescued these birds from criminal trappers and traffickers. We take in up to a hundred of them each year. We nurse them back to health then release them back into the wild. We also run a breeding-for-release programme for critically endangered species. These include the Bali starling, Javan hawk-eagle and Salmon-crested cockatoo. After we have hatched and raised these birds, we work with other release programmes across Indonesia to set them free. Thank you for coming. We hope this explanation gives you greater satisfaction. Regards Pak Pande General Manager