Well, I was kinda expecting a response that handles the subject matter even-handedly. I do not think for one inch that the infamous Mr. David Gill was primarily responsible for the collapse of the TWP in the first place. He did have a vision beyond the very stringent Biosecurity in Australia and wanted to venture out of the box ... Well, that is my perspective on the affair. When it finally turned out he and his wildlife park were gonna live outside the ARAZPA box indefinitely and the local territory federal govt. was not showing much for real effective cooperation, he pull the plug. We all know that months and months of legal wrangling ensued and the animal collection of erstwhile TWP was purely victimised, amongst which quite a few endangered species (of interest to local ARAZPA programmes). The unthinkable happened and several endangered species were since sold off to private individuals. Here, in Europe this is frowned upon as it remains in direct contravention of the notion of cooperative conservation breeding programmes between modern well-respected zoological facilities. It remains rather curious that throughout the whole affair ARAZPA never did intervene on behalf of the rare animal collection. Equally, it remains curious that the animal collection was not rescued on animal welfare grounds by legal authority and disbursed to ARAZPA attached zoological institutions. Whereas, it seems some of the wildlife was sold off and now thriving on a private individual's farm - who now is at the receiving end of the general public's ire sponsored by an uncritical media corps for having bought up the stock, whereas purely by animal welfare standards et cetera there is zilch apprehensible with regard to his wildlife ranch -. The endgame is the recent killing of a hippo mistaken for a wild boar ... This kinda makes one think about the hunting profession in the outback, does it not? I am not being sarcastic here, I feel the whole affair is a shambles that must make any self-respecting Aussie cringe ... (I just hope this time around people will come out and ask the questions that must be ask beyond bashing immigrant, unfamiliar ... et cetera)
i can only assume that by "TWP" you are mean tipperary station. it was not a wildlife park. it was not open to the public. it was not even a zoo. it was a private collection of animals owned by a millionaire who had no affinities with the rest of the australian zoological community. thus teh business did not collapse. he just decided he didn't want the animals anymore as the land they lived on was worth even more that they were. this man was warren anderson. he eventually sold the animals to david gill who had well and truly already started building his own zoo in australia. nobody ever suggested that gill had anything to do with the initial decision to liquidate the tipperary station animals. gill initially had much support from the local community the authorities and other zoos. he was an ARAZPA associate member and among other things perth and dubbo zoos sent him monkeys and bears. but gill didn't do his homework. he was now the owner of a number of animals in two different states/territories and rather than be responsible for his own predicament, he bailed back to his other controversial park in britain and let the situation deteriorate. he may have had nothing to do with the "collapse" of tipperary, but he has nobody to blame but himself for the collapse of his own park. HA HA! last i checked the sale of exotic species amongst private individuals is FAR, FAR, FAR more widespread in europe than it is in australia. i could get on the internet and buy a lemur off an italian website in ten minutes. give me a break. now this i agree on. it seems odd to me that either one, nor a consortium of zoos did not purchase the collection. it then seems odd to me that after it became common knowledge that at least one animal was abandoned and uncared for, that the zoological community, ie; ARAZPA did not make any kind of public statement on the issue, nor as far as i can gather request intervention from the territory government or biosecurity australia. being the logical choice for rehousing the animal, and given its value to them, this just seem ridiculous. no, actually it does not! the hippo wasn't supposed to be there. it looks very similar to a pest animal species that, for good reason, is vigorously hunted and despised in this country. its says nothing about the calibre of this hunter whatsoever. i find it unfortunate that you are not being sarcastic, since you come across as a rather critical of australia, as if this scenario would never happen in your glorious europe - last bastion of the endangered elephant. of course to think this is both presumptuous and hypocritical. especially since you make a point of writing off australians as xenophobic. (which we are, just no more than Europeans or any other country i've ever been to)
Good reply and a fair summary of the situation. Except to say that some of us are doing our best to unlearn the xeophobia we learnt from our European ancestors...
Once again ARAZPA gets a cursory bashing. ARAZPA did try to assist in the disposal of this collectiion. If you don't believe me check out this article from the time: AM - Millionaire charged with animal cruelty But if the likes of Anderson and Gill were not interested in co-operating there was little that could be done.
Another broad accusation. Specifics please. Maybe there was good reason. I'm not trying to defend ARAZPA except I think the expectations of some people in this group of ARAZPA are unrealistic. And I just dislike broad accusations, without substantiation.
I know of atleast 3 people who tried to take the animals, only to be told by an representative of ARAZPA to "back off' This is as far as I know, perhaps someone else will know more specifics.
As ARAZPA is the recognised partner in the zoo industry one would expect it to take a firm view on private individuals neglecting their duties in maintaining exotic and rare species (that intrinsically had/have a value to ARAZPA's own conservation breeding programmes). The newspaper report informs us of a private lawsuit that held a punishment of $11,000 or 12 mo. jail term. That is small tuppence by virtue of the value of the endangered species he held on the commercial market. What I contest here is that ARAZPA could not have done more on animal welfare grounds. The sad thing about this episode being that this neglect on animal welfare grounds was never properly dealt with by the law. ARAZPA could have been the recipient on welfare grounds of the rhinos, pygmy hippos et al (not too sure as to the rusa deer). Why discussing an element of jealousy - for lack of a better word as the earlier essay only seemed to ruffle the wrong feathers - it is to stimulate a somewhat dead subject to get at the bottom of why, how, where and when the TWP became the complete debacle that it has in the end. As I see it: David Gill tried to step into the void and along the way got cold feet when the initial support went "like **** hit the fan" nobody seemed to want to be associated with the ensuing end game. Whatever, the qualification of his endeavour in Australia bears no reflection on his wildlife park within the UK (if the industry has no mavericks, it will never progress beyond the stale-status quo like in any company or institution you need folks that dare to disagree or square for an intellectual battle). As for the distinction between wild boar and pygmy hippo, there is a significant difference in size, behaviour and basic ecology. As I am associated with the hunting profession locally, what I am questioning is how a trained hunter can ever not distinguish between the two. I feel free to contest that. However, it is not the mainstay of my query. It is rather sad that my essay has become the focus of something else than to get at "the only and real truth". I refuse to digress to that level and I am certainly not critical of Australians per se (as some folks will testify/corroborate) and I remain critical to much at home and within Europe as this relates to wildife, conservation, agricultural industries, other socio-economic corporate interests and (the lack of) credible sustainable development. As it stands most posting seem to deny any sense of perhaps a common shared culpability in the entire TWP affair. To find a black sheep is easier than to delve to the deepest crevices of the through to get at the bottom of the entire TWP affair.
I herewith re-iterate that I remain open to any real answers to the real issues. It is not just myself, but folks locally who have urged me to re-involve myself in this debate and who equally would like clarification of the whole TWP affair. Some direct relevant questions: What happened to the wildlife inventory when David Gill left TWP? What did law enforcement and judicial authorities find as this relates to Mr. Anderson, Mr. Gill, ARAZPA, the NT federal state, RSPCA-animal welfare authorities and the Health/Safety Dept.? What was the eventual sentence for those held culpable in the TWP affair? Has there ever been an independent public inquiry into the TWP affair? What actions did ARAZPA execute to bring the TWP affair to a just conclusion? What has been the role of the media in the entire affair? Some more recent and indirectly relevant questions: Why is the wild boar hunter not being persecuted for inadvertently killing an endangered species? Why did authorities never intervene when reports of wild exotic animals roaming the outback surfaced?
Have you hunted boars in the Northern Territory Kifaru Bwana? The hippo was shot at night under a spotlight. Boars graze in the open at night just like hippos. Boars the same size as a pygmy hippo are regularly killed in N.T.
It would help if you got your basic facts correct in the first place - Gill was never "at" Tipperary. I doubt you will find anybody on this list who could answer those questions, but if you are so concerned why not make your own enquiries of these organisations. What law has he broken? Now that question just shows a gross ignorance of the feral animal problem Australia faces. Just walking around my park, I could see maybe a hundred "exotic" animals a day. And we're not in the outback. You are dealing with vast areas of unpopulated country, and when "exotic" animals can terrorise entire towns, Town under siege: 6,000 camels to be shot - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), one solitary pygmy hippo is not likely to excite authorities.
I'm not going to enter the Tipperary debate because I know nothing about it. But I am going to protest against the attempted scapegoating of the hunter who shot the pygmy hippo. He had been given no reason to anticipate that a pygmy hippo was living in the area. Kifaru, I suspect that you do not, when hunting, mentally check off all of the other species that have no place being in the country but which might, just might, be mistaken for your quarry on a moonlit night. I've heard people at Melbourne Zoo, in fact, mistake a grazing pygmy hippo for a pig. It's not that outlandish... unless you're looking to fling blame at the easiest possible target. The hunter has been quite publicly remorseful in response to something that was certainly not his fault. And calling to "persecute" (I hope, at least, you meant "prosecute" because the whiff of vigilantism is bizarre) him is out of place.
i could deliver responses to your responses KB. however, the fact that you are trying to vilify the hunter who shot the hippo, to the point that you actually suggest that he should be prosecuted, only illustrates to me just how polarised my views are from yours. however whilst i will bow out from this debate with you to save my sanity - i will give you some advice so that you don't drive your other opponents to strangling themselves. get. your. facts.
In the intrest of Australian Wildlife Conservation the hunter should be heralded! He has extermiated a feral pest species!
That this whole issue was badly handled is beyond dispute. However to lay the blame at the foot of ARAZPA is unfair. ARAZPA is a private organisation, the only "power" it has is to expel a member from the organisation. Maybe, as ZYBen claims, it could have been more inclusive in trying to find a solution, I don't know. As best I understand it, (and anybody please correct me if I am wrong) what happened is this: - Anderson establishes a collection of animals at Tipperary, augmenting it with animals from Pearl Coast Zoo when that closes after McAlpine withdraws from Australia. It should be noted that legally these animals are his private property, in much the same way as a herd of cattle would be. For a time Tipperary is a member of ARAZPA but later drops out. - Gill came to Mareeba to establish what was going to be a primate-specialist zoo. On the way through (burning a couple of respected Aussie zoo figures on the way) he broadens it to a general zoo. - Anderson starts to loose interest in his collection, to the point he is accused of cruelty by not providing sufficient feed. However he is never prosecuted. - Gill offers to buy the collection at Tipperary, but runs foul of the Queensland government regulations regarding exotic animals, and the transfer of many of the animals is delayed. - Why did other Australian zoos not buy animals? We have seen the debate about the limited number of places in Aussie zoos on other threads. Besides many had bought stock from these lines when McAlpine closed Pearl Coast. Maybe they could have done more? Don't know. - In the meantime the company that Gill uses to operate Mareeba goes bankrupt. This immediately complicates the ownership issues for the animals remaining at Tipperary. - Sale of Mareeba by the receivers is complicated by several actions by Gill, not the least of which are that Gill still owns the land the park is situated on, and somehow an artificial lake Gill constructed "spills over" onto a neighbouring property. Gill eventually returns to the UK permanently. - Anderson has his own financial problems, and eventually sells Tipperary Station, adding a further layer of complication to the ownership of the animals that remain. The new owners have no interest in the animals at all. - Eventually these problems are worked through. Mareeba has new owners, the animals remaining at Tipperary appear to have been rehoused, and that is where we are today. Hope that helps.
That would be as close to as an accurate appraisal of the story that I have been able to piece together over time. To my mind Gill made some fundamental mistakes when attempting to establish Mareeba, based on his knowledge of the zoo sector in the UK. And we all know that South Lakes has had its problems. If he had done his homework he would have known about QLD's strict exotic rules and also the general pace of zoo redtape in Australia. I also feel that ARAZPA (and/or the larger Australian zoos in general) should have done more to be involved in placing the more valuable species into respectable zoos, rather than having a situation where they end up at a hunting ranch. It may well have ended up that way, but sometimes one should be seen to be doing something. I might be giving ARAZPA a hard time as they may well have been doing something behind the scenes. Thankfully anyway some of the species did end up at Cairns which are now part of the ARAZPA fold. Oh and definitely the hunter should not be prosecuted nor persecuted over the sorry tale of the lost hippo.
i'm not angry at the major zoos for not purchasing the animals. i just think that they were exceptionally foolish not to, at the very least form a consortium and do so. its just a really, really poor management decision. but then i disagree with many of the decisions made by taronga, melbourne and the others. i am however angry at ARAZPA - over one issue. that they kept quiet regarding the knowledge of the pygmy hippo abandoned at tipperary. i do believe it was known in the zoo management circles. and had they made statements to the press regarding the issue i have little doubt the animal would be right now be in a zoo rather than a taxidermists.
