Highland Wildlife Park review, with photos, July 2008 » Highland Wildlife Park

06-08-2008

Spectacled and Asian black bear are essentially tropical species though both can live in mountainous regions. I would have thought Brown bear, as a previous resident of Scotland, was the obvious bear species for them to display here ?

06-08-2008

I'd agree with that regarding Spectacled bears, but not necessarily the Asian Blacks. The Asian blacks have such a massive range, whilst they can be found in tropical rainforests etc. there are subspecies which range as far north as Siberia.

I think both would fit the bill, but I agree that Brown bear is definitely the more obvious choice. Asian Black bears would be an alternative. I would hope the HWP would go for whichever were rarest, and needed the conservation effort. I'm not sure which that'd be, it probably depends on subspecies.

06-08-2008

I'd rather see Brown Bears because of the historical link, though I agree Himalayan Black Bear could certainly fit the bill too. I imagine they are only likely to exhibit one species though- if not Polar, Brown?

Welsh pine martens
07-08-2008

Sorry for the deviation from main topic , but replying to Pertinax' post this morning .
The Welsh pine martens are incredible elusive , I am not aware of photos , road kills or similar . I might have been wrong previously in that the positive identification was from scats . They have been reported from many areas including forests not too far from here . Nobody is lucky enough to get them in their garden though !

07-08-2008

Gotta agree really. Still makes me wonder why they don't have them at the moment, I would've thought European Brown would be easy to find for a zoo like HWP, and not hard to display. Maybe the lack of woodland? It seems most of the trees, from what people have said, are in the drive through part of the park.

07-08-2008

I Think this may be part of the reason they don't display brown bear or probably ever will, as a species they are pretty safe in the wild , whereas the Asian black and spectacled are at far greater risk, there is also the argument over cubs that cannot be sent to other zoos, i don't think the park authorities would go down the line of some Scandinavian zoos and let bears breed and then euthanase the cubs, can you imagine the headlines!

07-08-2008

No I didn't. They are not on the information leaflet, and I didn't spot any in the reserves - although it was mentioned that they had kids on one of the notice boards. I presume there must be space to hold them off-exhibit somewhere.

I wonder if they could fit bears in below the beavers, between the macaques and the service yard - or perhaps that space will be used for the Amur leopard(s).

Alan

__________________
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

07-08-2008

When i visited last they had the tahr in the same enclosure as the pair of goral, with plans to move them into the same part of the drive through reserve as the kiang and yak.
I never thought about where they could place bears but now that i think about it there is a lot of land in the area of the macaque and beaver enclosure and up to the car park.

07-08-2008

I thought they used to keep European Brown bears. I'm sure as late as the mid 90s I remember reading about them having 2 female brown bears that didn't get on and kept permanently to different sides of the enclosure.....it could have something to do with a polar bear cub at Edinburgh at the time, I think they moved mercedes and the cub to the old brown bear enclosure, as they still had the male polar bear at the time, so I'm assuming the last brown bear would have gone on to the HWP to join an existing animal, with which it didn't get on. Does anyone else remember this?

07-08-2008

soory for deviations- this forum is so big nowadays I tend not to change threads unless its a major new topic, as its more difficult for people to locate where a discussion has gone.

welsh martens; they may be much more thinly distributed than in Scotland- hence the lack of tangible evidence- I presume there must be sightings though?

11-08-2008

They didn't have the bears when I visited in 2004, but HWP did house brown bears at some earlier stage in their development (I believe near the cliff-face, though don't quote me - I am guessing this is where the various goat species are now). Brown bears were always on the cards when the collection was purely extinct/native British species. Whether the attraction of tigers, camels and musk ox have dampened this idea... maybe they are just holding out for the giant pandas? I would hazard a guess that they would be more of a drawcard...

11-08-2008

i was up at camperdown wildlife park in dundee last week,they have two brown bears one of which came from HWP and the other from edinburgh zoo, they are both around 21 years old if i remember correctly and named comet and star.there is a picture of them in the gallery section.

Highland Wildlife Park brown bears
12-08-2008

I have an inventory of the park dated 31.10.1984 . This shows 1.1 European brown bears . A guide book from the same time shows a bear enclosure between 2 blocks of pens , the nearer block to the entrance housing owls and eagles , the further lynx , wild goat and reindeer , opposite all of these is the wolf enclosure . This is all in the walking area of the collection , probably much changed now .