bongo born » Western Plains Zoo

bongo born
26-10-2008

this is a bit of old news...but it finally has made the news. a female bongo has been born at TWPZ to female Nambala, who suffered complications during the birth and the calf had to be delivered by caeserian.
good news all round, with mother and calf now bonded. all we need now is new genes

26-10-2008

Great news, Bongos are truly unique animals,

26-10-2008

cool im going to Dubbo for a week in november! il be sure to check her out!

27-10-2008

I've lost track of which bongos are where so can't remmebr who the father would be?

27-10-2008

So Glyn, what's the chance of getting new genes?

(When I first joined this forum 18 months ago I was under the impression that it was impossible; but your cousin ZooPro explained in a detailed post that it is not a case of "never," but it is extremely difficult - would require money, willpower and patient unravelling of red tape to achieve. I reckon it's worth it; but I'm not the one who has to do it.)

Do you think it will happen?

27-10-2008

Sadly, the import of most ungulates into Australia is not possible at the moment, and highly unlikely in the future. Unless we can overcome the restrictions imposed by Biosecurity Australia and the pressure applied by the commercial cattle, sheep and pig industries to prevent these imports, it's unlikely to happen any time soon.

27-10-2008

impala for werribee anyone?

28-10-2008

yet as we speak millions of dollars worth of horse flesh is getting the green light to come into the country for the melbourne cup.
horse flu anyone?

28-10-2008

so all we have to do is disguise a few bongo as race horses and were set! start painting every one

28-10-2008

oh I know, reason why horses weren't allowed in the Melbourne show last year, I made a Melbourne cup thread if you want to discuss it,

28-10-2008

the thing that cracks me up about the whole thing is this...whilst i agree with protecting the agricultural industry at all costs, there seems to be some gaping holes in our quarantine protection system. a recent wait in customs in sydney airport got me thinking just how easy it would be to walk in a soil-borne disease, or accidentally forget to declare something and have it missed by human error. you only have to listen to rumours of illegally imported birds and reptiles, reports of insects and reptiles freighted in accidentally on vehicles and equipment....need i go on.
this gets me wondering...if zoos are importing captive bred hoofed stock from zoos in the west, which go through pre-export health screening and then extended quarantine here in Australia...and are held in zoos which are essentially quarantine zones then surely whilst restrictions should be maintained i think they probably could be relaxe just a little. either that or tightened even further, because as far as im concerned its human travellers and not animals which represent the biggest quarantine threat.

28-10-2008

Good point Glyn. I fully agree with what you have said. One question on the form when coming back to Australia something like. . . have you been working in or around farms . . or something along those lines. My clothes were left in the country as I knew they could be a risk but how easy would it be for the average traveller to bring in a deadly disease on the sole of their shoes.

28-10-2008

Also I told customs I had left the work clothes behind and there was no hesitation in letting me through (after confiscating some elephant dung paper

29-10-2008

The whole ban on even-toed ungulates seems a bit too "blanket", if you know what I mean, and doesn't take in differences between species. I would like to know, for instance, just how dangerous disease-wise a pygmy hippo is likely to be to our grazing industry.

Getting back to bongos, I believe that without fresh blood we should attempt to maintain the species as long as possible. Their close relative the sitatunga (which in our region is just about gone - 2 males 6 females in New Zealand; 2 females in Australia) has lasted for 50 years after just one importation and would probably have continued for another decade or two with proper husbandry ( they were "let slide" because the bongo was the preferred species - how ironic!)

It's worthwhile keeping the bongo going because somewhere in the future the situation may change. For example, cattle embryos are routinely imported and implanted in surrogate mothers - maybe the same can be done with various tragelaphine antelopes using elands as surrogates. It won't happen in my lifetime, but may be possible in the future.

29-10-2008

Ara I just wonder why the Cocos (keeling) Islands can't be used to import Ungulates, they were used with the importation of the Black rhinos from Africa which went to the WPZ, also the eight Thai Elephants went through there as well, they are a long way offshore and with some of the blood tests they do today takes a matter of hours to get results back instead of weeks as it was "in some cases" in the past., you would think this would be the ideal place to bring them into our zoos