Woburn ! » Woburn Safari Park

elephants
28-06-2008

The new elephant house must have been finished a while ago as its was two/thirds built last September. Anyone know about what plans they have to add to the existing 1.2?

28-06-2008

The African ungulate conservation building was also designed with okapi in mind along with the above mentioned gazelle and wild ass, will be interesting to see how this area develops, with such high profile, endangered and skittish animals mentioned it will be a bit risky putting them in drive through areas.

28-06-2008

I do not mind the rarer species being off show or in a Conservation Facility. Actually, I can see the point in a separate rare ungulate breeding compound.

As you observed most "regular" zoo visitors do not bat an eye-lid to a Somali wild ass or Mhorr gazelle, much less their rarity or the importance of conserving and breeding them.

If a conventional safari park can walk along this line, who knows what may happen in the future. Look what happened to Beekse Bergen near Tilburg. It has still a drive-thru component (but much less intrusive), but now also sports a "walking" safari style and has a totally African theme to it. The entire collection has been reviewed, some species have been phased out and now the safari park invests exclusively in endangered species + more emphasis on lesser wildlife (quite a few new bird exhibits all over) and perhaps they may even go on to build an amphibian or reptile center.

I suppose Woburn Safari is going into that direction and within 5-10 years I predict a very different safari park experience over there!

29-06-2008

I can understand not mixing very rare & valuable species like Somali Ass or Okapis with other species in shared reserves where they could be injured. However Woburn SP is very much a commercial enterprise so why they have aquired e.g. the asses, which are of no special display value to the visitors who go there, seems a bit of a mystery.

29-06-2008

Woburn has always had a "taste" for the rarer type of animal and from the start wanted animals like Bongo (which they still have) which was not as common in UK zoos then as they are today, they wanted Okapis many years ago which they did not aquire, they must be one of the few Safari parks that do have Przewalksi horse .

I hope they do get their elephant breeding program off the ground and maybe even add a couple more to the small herd they have now.

29-06-2008

Bringing in more elephants will be difficult, because there are basically no female asian elephants in breeding age availible in europe (unless you import some from asian countries). It seems to me that there is a shortage of older non-breeding females at the moment, too. Same for the african species..

In the last years, a lot of zoos have build brand-new enclosures or renovated their existing ones, and have brought in new elephants for these facilities, the "market" seems to be pretty empty now. Which is not a bad thing from the point of animal welfare.

29-06-2008

we have alreadly spoken about the all female herd at Twycross on the forum before which could be rotated between the two zoos for breeding, even the distance for this is not far

29-06-2008

This a good idea just it won`t happen because Twycross is not very interested in breeding its elephants.

29-06-2008

Even if Twycross sent only ONE female to Woburn at a time there still would be about three cows on exhibit if thats all they are concerned about, then bring the mated cow back untill another cow is readly to tranfer, thats not so hard

29-06-2008

Its a shame about the breeding, Noor Jahan would be a suitable mate for Raja, in fact they came from the same sanctuary. Raja would be an excellent bull, for the future in the UK,

29-06-2008

I am not that fussed on their website, not much animal information at all

29-06-2008

one reason this will probably never happen is the fact that it is believed that Noor Jahan is already pregnant due to AI. If they've had one successful AI attempt they'll probably stick with that rather than go through all the effort of transporting elephants to Woburn and back.

29-06-2008

woh, I'm probably really really slow, can you give me a website with the details? This is great news ( probably old great news) Thank you a lot.

29-06-2008

Check out one of the Twycross Zoo threads. I can't remember which one exactly though...

29-06-2008

Twycross have got themselves into a difficult situation over this. What I'd really like to see is the four females from Twycross relocated permanently to Woburn, who have a bull, a brand new house and large paddocks and are actually comitted to breeding, whereas Twycross aren't really- I am pretty sure the current AI pregnancy of Norjahan is more because they feel obligated to try & breed from these females, not because they really want to build up a breeding herd. Their accomodation/space is not large enough anyway. Twycross should keep only non-breeders then there would be no critisism about them not having a bull etc.

Of course things will probably just stay as they are, but it is a pretty ridiculous situation...