Zootierliste says only Chester and South Lakes, but I know that Nick at Dudley was alive recently, I'm fairly sure he's still kicking.
As far as I know, its just one elderly single male left at Dudley, and the two breeding pairs/small groups at South Lakes and Chester. I believe these two zoos, and possibly Antwerp are the only zoos in Europe still breeding this species - unless new pairs have been established elsewhere, I think the remaining animals across Europe are also elderly pairs or individuals.
I think Chester have 3.3,although 2.2 are the off spring of the breeding pair,but there are plans to bring in different animals to make new pairs and possibly move a pair to another collection.
Twycross Zoo, when under the direction of Molly Badham and Nathalie Evans held babirusa in the collection and were successful in breeding this species.
Thanks guys. The last I heard, some years ago now, was that "new animals" were meant to be being imported into the UK population. But I doubt if that ever happened because the population has been in a steady decline for some time, with those remaining animals being all largely related stock ?
I only remember them having a single male, which was only being held temporarily, which was many years ago now.
Thrigby still had one when i visited in February/March last year, but i believe it died shortly afterwards.
Assuming South Lakes only have the breeding pair and their most recent (single) offspring, this would leave ten individuals remaining in the UK, and 9 of these are of breeding age or younger and held in institutions with a track record for breeding them. In some ways, this is a better situation than ten years ago when there were lots of non-breeding pairs dispersed across a larger number of zoos. The only difficulty remaining is the very small gene pool which may have been a factor in the decline of the population in recent years.
