Ben Mee, the owner of Dartmoor wildlife park has announced a £6 million investment plan for the park. This includes plans to bring in elephants and orang-utans. This investment will take the form of a research centre, with funding possibly from Europe and tax breaks, once the park forms itself into a charity organisation. Boss aims to buy zoo again to create 6m animal research centre | This is Cornwall
I don't really see the point of this with somewhere like Paignton Zoo not far away. Surely he should go for a niche attraction rather than becoming just another zoo with big animals.
i know he's always had plans for both species but would he have enough space within the park boundaries? Especially for an elephant enclosure.
I know £6 million sounds like a lot of money, but elephants and orangs are among the most expensive species to house properly (up to modern standards). There may not be much small change left over for other species. Alan
If the plans go ahead it could be interesting times for the place,I have heard talk about plans to build an exhibit for Elephants,to house a group of young Bulls,will wait and see what happens!
Yeah, if you go back to just after he first bought the place I recall him announcing his excitement for bringing in Giraffes, so to be honest I will believe it all when I see it. I agree with others who said that the place is not really suited to housing large and very expensive animals when you have so much similar competition locally. He would be far better off specialising in smaller species of mammal etc...
I am surprised that separate cat enclosures (holding units) haven't been built by now to ease keeping them. And that for example the breeding of jaguars hasn't been sorted when the park suits them so well. Benjamin Mee does make me laugh when he says things like this... "There is no moral point in keeping captive animals unless you are doing research." Not captive breeding for the survival of species then? Hmm. I loved Dartmoor when I visited, so much potential there, but I really can't help thinking that doing this is is the wrong way of going about it...
