On November 23 last year, two Tasmanian wombats arrived at BestZoo. They are a male and a female, they come from the Darling Downs Zoo in Australia. They are 7 and 8 years old.
Is the European region familiar with breeding wombats? I know that Duisburg had breeding success but I don't know any other recent births.
Hamerton, Hannover, Copenhagen and Budapest have all bred the species in recent years - with Duisburg and Hamerton breeding the mainland subspecies, and the remaining three breeding the Tasmanian subspecies.
so if things go well then European zoos (hopefully) wouldn't have to rely on Australia for imports correct?
According to Zoovaria (Dutch Instagram account covering zoo news), a male (spotted) jaguar was born on the 31th of October last year. Source: Instagram of Zoovaria (19/05/2021) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPDpt5hgosS/
Last Tuesday I visited BestZoo for the first time mainly to see the wombats. Their enclosure is at the end of the zoo and is only viewable if you stand on a bench or look past a large fench... I asked a zookeeper whether they had wombats to which she replied "no" and that she wasn't allowed to tell me whether they would arrive or had arrived... We all know that they arrived, given the quoted post and Ralph's uploaded photo. Could someone tell me whether they still have the wombats? One of the doors to the inside enclosure was open, so perhaps they were inside? I did also see a goat grazing in one of the outside enclosures not sure if both species can be kept together. I wasn't so impressed by the zoo, most birds/primates have small cages but the wombat and fossa enclosures looked good. The new entrance building (seen from a distance) also looked quite good, so I am interested to see how this zoo will develop itself in the coming years. I was surprised by the number of Sri Lankan leopards that the zoo had, I counted 7 leopards divided over 2 enclosures. I did however only see 2 jaguars, but I persume that the male was inside. I saw the pair of Allen's gallinule (Porphyrio alleni) which share their enclosure with Green magpie (Cissa chinensis). Lastly I saw 2 Caracals (Caracal caracal) in one of the fossa enclosures. According to ZTL this species was no longer in the collection.
I visited about a month ago and saw one wombat walking through the exhibit you described, while standing on the bench, looking past the fence… One of the fossa enclosures seemed empty at the time. In my opinion, most aviaries are adequate but I agree that the primates are on the short end of the stick. It’s a promising little zoo though, with a quirky collection.
While the collection might have some nice species, to me it is a glorified animal collector's backyard. I have not seen the new things but I visited in 2019 and it was the biggest dissapointment. The zoo might have to rethink their collection based on the space. The amount of big cats in a small space is insane..
Personally I would have preferred if Best Zoo had invested some if not all of the money for their fancy new entrance building into improving and enlarging some of their existing exhibits, especially the cat and some of the primate exhibits. I visited in 2019 and while I saw no third world or roadsize hellhole level awfulness at Best, I did see quite a few rather poor exhibits with questionable adequacy and substantial room for improvement. I would like to see this zoo develop and improve, as there is some potential.
Has it changed hands in ownership as the new projects and entry area signify different directional efforts.
Last week at least 2 Banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) were born. Source: Instagram of Best Zoo (24/08/2021) https://www.instagram.com/p/CS9KltzqdhG/
Last Tuesday a few Chacoan maras (Dolichotis salinicola) were born. Source: Instagram of Bes Zoo (19/09/2021) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUAeEEXKk0y/
The pair of Tasmanian wombats (Vombatus ursinus tasmaniensis) can now be seen in their enclosure. Best Zoo "revealed" last week that this species is on show. Source: Instagram of Best Zoo (19/10/2021) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVNTVMEqSCu/
In BestZoo there have been two births recently. At the end of last month, a black-capped capuchin (Sapajus apella) was born, and last week a southern tamandua (Tamandua tetradactyla) was born. Source: Facebook of BestZoo
I saw two brush-tailed possums at BestZoo today, I believe this is a new species for the zoo. They were both in the ring-tailed lemur indoor enclosures, both in a seperate cage. One of them looked very old. It was very hard to see them in their dark enclosure, I only noticed them because the older one was sitting right in front of the window when I walked by.
