It also turns out Gillian, the other female lion has passed in November. This leaves Blackpool with Wallace and Khari, a 6 month old cub.
Bit of sad news to end the year on - the final Arabian Mountain Gazelle in Europe died at Blackpool last week. The only others of her species are in the UAE
A) Where taxonomics are concerned I should point out the original imports were mountain gazelle from Yemen and are surely not from the purported arabica lineage (that is a mis-nomer of sorts). Nor where they Gazella bilkis - which name has been singing around since the Field Museum got wind of Yemeni gazelles -. Whether some may in fact have been Gazella g. erlangeri I cannot say for sure, but it was an amalgamated and interesting group for sure. Rest assured, I still would like to get to the bottom of that ...!! B) Surely, a very sad loss and all and particularly. However, their demise was already written on the wall when Chester Zoo went out of the species and the specific BIAZA breeding program was disbanded. Climatic and enviro-behavioral conditions were cited, and I really would have wished for that the core of the breeding group might have been - better - relocated to KSA where ZSL manages the KKWRC facility near Riyadh (... but, surely this only in hindsight). C) The precarious state of government and security and the silent war and power struggles that have been raging over Yemen's State Government, its tribal- and religious landscape and loose allegiances that come and go do not bode well for wildlife in the country (allthough this is a very interesting nation to say the least, and certainly where gazelles is concerned is more species-rich than we might care to think). Sadly, it do not look to change quite soon and neighbour KSA is too deeply entrenched in it too.
It is an end of an era with the loss of the last Arabian Mountain Gazelle in Europe. Yes they were not of a pure genetic composition, that was discovered many years ago, when many of the UK zoos holding them at that time decided to , firstly stop breeding them, and secondly, to phase out keeping them, almost collection by collection.They originally bred very well and were hugely successful at their peak, quickly becoming very common in UK zoos. I worked with a large group of them, they were a delight to work with, and very popular with the public too. So yes is it a shame to see the last one of their kind die out in the UK at least.
