Both of these collections have a fair bit to prove at present, and are faced with a category which I think will take a fair bit of picking apart and discussion.... TEMPERATE FOREST AND WOODLAND. I actually have little idea of which way this one will go, so look forward to seeing what people think!
I think a Colchester 1/0 would have better reflected my view but as this wasn't an option I went with 3/0. My decision in favour of Colchester was basically down to the fact that they keep Eurasian grey wolves which are a temperate woodland / forest species and an apex predator / keystone species. As far as I can see Marwell have no species native to this biome although Bennet's wallaby have become invasive in it.
There's a few others which I would personally classify within the category - Amur Tiger and Amur Leopard, for instance.
Yes, I was thinking of these and I guess this is what you meant in the intro when you said the category would need picking apart and discussing. I did sort of think that they could be loosely included but personally I tend to think of the biome that both of these big cats occupy as being more Boreal forest rather than temperate so the only species I could classify as being definitively native to temperate forest / woodland was the Eurasian grey wolf.
For clarity my thinking was that boreal forest would probably come under both the Mountains/Poles and Temperate Forest categories, depending on the species - in this case I think both taxa naturally range far enough south to count within this category.... quite apart from anything else, well into the 20th century the tiger was still found in the deciduous woodlands of the Caucasus and central China, and it appears from the following map that the Amur region of northeast China and southeast Siberia, along with the Korean Peninsula, is accepted as both temperate broadleaf and mixed forest *and* boreal forest by the WWF:
Good point and I agree that the historic range of both species would have extended into what could be classed as forms of temperate forest. I'll have a think about it and might change my vote in favour of Marwell but at the moment I would have to say that because of the wolf I'm currently sticking with Colchester (though I would prefer to vote for Marwell given their greater overall conservation output).
It's gonna be a bit of a damp squib either way which is why I think this one will hopefully incur more conversation, as people try to work out which is the fairest way to go with what little there is available!
But... you haven't counted on an additional factor...A.P. Wolfe and "Tainted blood", it could have the potential to swing the vote even further to Colchester.
I think that is probably because there is so little to vote on or discuss, as you suggested earlier. For this competition, I think the current counts for more and Colchester have recently bred Amur leopard whilst Marwell appear to have given up on them (according to information posted on Marwell threads). Thought Marwell's tiger enclosure has stood the test of time, Colchester's is vastly superior from a visitor viewpoint. Colchester have Wolves, Marwell don't, 2-1 Colchester for me
