German traditionalism vs conservation icon vs a remarkable physical setting. Today's subject? Carnivores.
Dortmund all the way for me -a bigger range of carnivores (including some relative rarities) and that fantastic lynx enclosure.
Is Jersey's conservation efforts for carnivores in the wild - e.g. mountain coatis and Madagascan species - allowed to count for anything?
Civets Dortmund: Himalayan palm civet, Philippine palm civet Cats Dortmund: Leopard, northern lynx, Indochinese clouded leopard, jaguarondi, serval, southern oncilla Salzburg: Cougar, lion, snow leopard, cheetah Mongooses Dortmund: Yellow mongoose Salzburg: Banded mongoose Malagasy carnivores Jersey: Narrow-striped boky Dogs Dortmund: Bat-eared fox Salzburg: Corsac fox, Eurasian wolf Bears Salzburg: Brown bear Mustelids Dortmund: European badger, giant otter Salzburg: Eurasian otter, wolverine Sea lions Dortmund: Californian sea lion, South American fur seal The following zoos are the only ones with families containing ‘unique’ species. Dortmund: Civets, sea lions Jersey: Malagasy carnivores Salzburg: Bears A close win for Dortmund
Absolutely. The criteria you choose is entirely up to you, as long as it relates strictly to the carnivore category. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think those efforts should carry the day?
I thought Andean bears were one of the very few charismatic megafauna species at Jersey, along with the gorillas? What happened to them?
I'm excluding species that occur in 2 or more of the contending zoos. Dortmund and Jersey both have Andean bears according to ZTL.
But this shows the huge flaw in your current methodology. Suppose that Salzburg and Dortmund both had huge but identical carnivore collections, whereas Jersey had a small but unique display of 3 species. You would only list those three and award the win to Jersey. That, to me, seems misguided, even if I accepted the paradigm that number of species is the defining factor, which I don't.
It works better if you consider that DR appears to have shifted paradigms from 'species quantity' to 'species rarity'.
I have been to Jersey zoo and they have less carnivores than almost any other zoo. Meerkats, Coatis, Andean bears, N.S. boky and thats about it. The enclosures are all OK but not exceptional. I have supported Jersey for years and admire their conservation work, but in this contest and this category how can they get a vote. Could one of the posters make a convincing case for Jersey's carnivores?
Why can I not see the voters names as per usual when pressing the vote numbers. is anyone else having this problem.
I'm guessing that would be because I pressed the wrong button. My apologies. I won't take any action now but if it looks like the error might conceivably have had a material impact on the result tomorrow I'll consider whether to replay the tie.
My vote is with Salzburg because of their stunning mountain slope enclosures for most of their big carnivores. Additionallt all other carnivore enclosures are pretty good to, whereas Dortmund is somewhat to cagey...
I accept that this creates an anomaly, but I decided to go for biodiversity, rather than number of species, as it allows a small, diverse collection the chance to win against a much larger, but less diverse collection.
I went with Dortmund and just as easily could have gone Salzburg, but much as I like Jersey it is hard to see how they deserve a vote for their carnivores. With Birds, Reptiles or Primates they could compete and if the category was conservation and/or reputation they would be way ahead of the pack. Anyway it is always of interest to see the voting patterns and read the reasons for voters choices, but it is doubtful that the I.d. glitch would have skewed the contest very much if at all.
You forgot the Asian small clawed otters, but hardly matters, I would like to see one of the 6 Jersey voters explain their criteria, since really only 2 carnivores they hold are of any significance:Narrow Striped Mongoose, 7 holders in Europe, Andean Bear 25 Both far from being unique As has been said, Jersey would be competitive on 3 categories , but carnivores, no chance, even against some of the smallest UK zoos, I'd like to see it compete on ungulates too?
But the system also has the potential to produce totally misleading pictures about diversity. Let's say that Salzburg and Dortmund both have Slender Mongoose and Cusimanse, and Jersey has Meerkat. The system will 'cancel out' the two zoos with more, and more interesting, species and award the 'mongoose point' to Jersey, which has only one species, the infamous meerkat. That doesn't reward diversity at all. I can see that in cases where zoos typically hold many species from a family (eg ducks) this system should work fine. However, for most families of any class zoos will usually hold one or two species. The chance that slightly less common species will be present in two zoos is really non-negligible and as soon as that happens the whole thing becomes very, very questionable.
