I've just found out that Lakeland Wildlife Oasis in South Cumbria is up for sale... I seem to remember it as quite a nice little collection, Fossa, Mara at liberty, and the usual primate suspects... Has anyone been recently? The price...offers around £650,000(no on site accommodation though)
saw an advert in cage and avairy paper last week. Doesn't say what the collection is called . Ad reads " Established freehold zoo for sale. Due to retirement.Mixed collection of animals including tropical house, cafe, play area.south Cumbria. offers £650,000."
That's where i saw it too trigger, a process of elimination lead me to believe it was Lakeland Wildlife Oasis...
This is an interesting development. I met one of the owners 12 years ago on a course, just when they were starting up. Unfortunately I have never visited, although my wife says that it is quite small with not much room for expansion. A couple of nice species - fossa and parson chamaeleon, but otherwise standard zoo collection. Location-wise it is not the greatest, as it isn't quite Lake District proper and you also have Blackpool down the road. Have any of the members visited recently and able to give an appraisal?
I went last year. It is a bit like the natural history part of a museum, with displays of evolution and animal diversity illustrated with live animals. They had elephant shrews (sorry, sengis!) and horseshoe crabs which you don't see many of. Outside is basically a picnic area with rheas, maras, degus, muntjacs, and some cages with ruffed lemurs, and fossas, which have bred. It's actually quite a nice little place but I can see why it has not been financially successful. I would imagine they have quite a few school groups.
I visited last year too - it's just round the corner from the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss (which is one of my favourite places). I wasn't awfully impressed by the indoor exhibits. The outdoor part was rather better, particularly for small primates but I didn't see any sense of purpose - it was a rather random collection of animals with red squirrels next to marmosets and a strange mixture of birds including several singletons, such as a very noisy red-billed blue pie in a small flight. Alan
