Blair Drummond Safari & Adventure Park Blair Drummond Safari Park News

You must be nuts. What has MK ever done for chimpanzee conservation in general or ex situ captive-breeding programs (most of the Blair Drummond chimpanzees are the West African verus subspecies)?

In my personal view, MK is the worst from the worst sanctuary ordaining confiscated chimpanzees to an indefinite life in captivity without being able to have a family social structure allowing them to reproduce naturally et cetera (on animal welfare and behavioral enrichment grounds).

Most chimpanzees they confiscate originate from Africa and have come from known genetic founder groupings and subspecies, yet the MK sanctuary does nothing to determine their genetic status (whether verus, ellioti, troglodytes or the fourth spp), not repatriate nor register these into breeding groups of their subspecies within the European zoo network.

I would like to know what happened to the other former chimpanzee (Blossom, Jill, Rosie, and Tupelo). Have they all passed away at Blair Drummond previously or sent elsewhere?

Also, I reiterate my question what is the long term plan with chimpanzee or great ape at Blair Drummond?

 

Monkey World has never set out to breed Chimpanzees. The aim of the park was to rescue and rehabilitate individuals involved in the tourism trade being mistreated and working long hours in horrible conditions.

They've managed to put these chimps into great enclosures and large family groups and care is given to all individuals.

They could take the two chimps left behind and put them in a far better enclosure in a larger group. Better than being stuck on a little island for boat loads of people to gawp at. Monkey World beat Blair Drummond 13-0 on the poll for best Chimpanzee enclosure, second only to Edinburgh overall.

Maybe watch Monkey Life and Monkey Business to see the level of care given to all primates who live there.

 

To be fair, you can’t use the boat ride anymore, you can only see them from a viewpoint near the island

 

Zoonut23, you obviously do not seem to have fully grasped what I did write vis a vis MK and chimpanzee management and what this meant. I am not talking about rehabilitation at all here, nor animal welfare ... which generally is of a very good standard in accredited zoos throughout Europe and part of the EAZA or EARAZA networks.

I personally view
A) do not subscribe to the sanctuary rationale in Europe for long term rehabilitation of chimpanzees.
B) EAZA / EEP maintains a breeding program for chimpanzee as the various subspecies are (critically) endangered and or threatened which makes sense both as an assurance population for their wild counterparts and a focal point for out of range conservation education and ex situ conservation breeding and
C) to me the whole rehabilitation out of range and promoting non-breeding and contracepting non hybridised chimpanzee of known origins disallows these chimpanzees to fully express their natural behavioral patterns, including breeding and having babies and have a meaningful social family life as opposed to managing them as a genetic dead end to live their afterlife in a far off corner of the globe away from their African homelands.

Their real rehabilitation work is provided for by a string of sanctuaries in Africa itself (PASA) involved in both their rehabilitation, in situ conservation and if possible relocation and reintroduction of previously captive functional chimpanzee groups to the wild (in their respective subspecific ranges and correct subspecies within range.

Really, this whole concept and rationale far away from source without confronting local live or death situations, acknowledging that people and wildlife need to co-exist, alternative income generation, resolve people wildlife conflicten, combatting deforestation and effectively contributing to in situ conservation within range at source to wild chimpanzee populations is way more effective to reach these objectives. And I am not even mentioning nor dropping the somewhat post colonial paternalistic approach to South nations in dealing with all the African continent's environmental challenges and realise the people and wildlife coexist and One Healthy Planet.

 

Tell me you've never been to Monkey World without actually saying you've never been to Monkey World.

The park has four social groups of chimps which display far more natural behaviours than any other group I've ever seen. One group even overthrew it's leader.

 

Oh dear. It seems someone else has swallowed the Monkey World Kool Aid.

Just because somewhere terms itself a "sanctuary", it does not automatically elevate their level of care above that of a zoo (which is what Monkey World is, truly). I have argued this point elsewhere recently on this forum.

Why should a zoo want to divest themselves of a species or cause an elderly animal unnecessary stress by trying to force it to fit into a whole new social structure which is possibly (more than likely) hostile towards it?

Chimp "society" is brutal and hard. An elderly animal has no breeding potential (female) for a group leader or use as a second (male).

It would be like sticking your granny with a foreign family with an unfamiliar language and unknown dynamic and a psychopath with a hair trigger as patriarch, and asking her to fit in and be happy.

Not all chimps need or want to be, or benefit from, being in groups, especially as they get older and cannot defend themselves, despite what Monkey World might like people to believe.

Yes, they have done a lot of good, but holding themselves as something better than, and seperate to, the larger zoo community, is not a helpful or conciliatory attitude to display towards your peers.

Far better to let alone, IMO or you know, let the zoo themselves decide for the best.

Suggesting offloading animals because they are surplus to requirements in your opinion and would be better off elsewhere is likely offensive to the dedicated keepers who care for them every day.

 

I would like once more to underline this is a Blair Drummond Safari Park thread and not an advertising window for MW.

What surprises me further is that you also seem to have failed to understand that both zoos in Scotland with larger chimpanzee groups like Blair Drummond and Edinburgh each have state of the art facilities and high level of great ape care.

Finally - surely to me - let us just say agree to disagree - and that the notion of a short quid MK over how Blair Drummond staff care for and engage with their animal collection and individual species I ... too find a little on the offensive towards dedicated keepers and curatorial staff at BD.

 

I don't think that dropping MW at every turn in the Blair Drummond news thread is any helpful to a meaningful debate on the future of chimpanzee at the Safari Park. I will just choose to ignore any future reference to it from now on.

 

Fair enough. I'm not saying the chimps should go there it was just a suggestion in the same way as when Kayan the Orangutan's mum at Twycross Zoo died everyone suggested places as an option to send her (ironically she did end up at Monkey World in the end). At the end of the day we're all here to have a bit of a gossip about zoos and we're all going to have disagreements. It's not something to get into an argument about.

 

Recently, Blair Drummond got a new chimpanzee; a 32-year-old male named Peter, who came from Twycross Zoo. This move was made in order for Twycross Zoo to reintroduce another chimp named Tommy back into their chimp group with hopes to encourage natural social structures and breeding behaviours among the chimps.

 

This seems like a piece of complex slightly misleading 'press release' jargon. Yes, they want to introduce Tommy but the reality is that Twycross will need fresh 'verus' female chimps to restart breeding and I doubt there's any intention to try and breed from any of the current ones except male Kibale in the future.

 

Blair Drummond were down to two females until arrival of male from Twycross, so no longer a 'larger group'.

 

They do say three's a crowd!

 

The male Chippy is still there as well I think

 

The park has welcomed a new mob of parma wallabies and some prairie dogs from Five Sisters zoo.

Blair Drummond Safari Park on Instagram: " Exciting News! We're thrilled to welcome some adorable new faces to the park - a coterie of prairie dogs and a mob of wallabies! Why not pop along and say hello this weekend? Find out more https://bit.ly/4axZq4o Get your tickets https://bit.ly/423nUyP . . . Operations Supervisor Graeme . . #prairiedogs #wallabies #NewArrivals2024"

 

Peter the chimp from Twycross has been successfully integrated with their remaining pair( its 1.1 including Chippy- not 0.2 as I suggested above) and he's doing well with them. Happy ending for him. There's a short video out there about it.

 

Was Peter's move due to conflict in the group? Did he challenge for dominance or just not accepted?

 

I believe they said he challenged for dominance but I think he had poor socialisation skills too so maybe more complicated than that. His companion William was accepted okay on his own and is now in the main group. Peter seems fine with the two at Blair Drummond so they resolved a difficult issue with his move.

 

see above...

 

Does anyone know if Blair Drummond are hoping to build their group back up or phase chimps out slowly