Does anyone know when the new Elephant exhibit at Dublin Zoo is to open or even have any photo's. thanks
It says on their website the new calf(and the others obviously) can be seen 'in early June' when the elephant exhibit is/was to open. But nothing updated.
I have just booked a flight to Dublin for the day on August 9th, were I will be spending must of the day at the zoo. I have seen a couple of photo's of the new Elephant exhibit and it looks good and has many enrichment features. Shall post photo's and comments on my return.
Maybe you can find out what they are proposing to do about a bull and whether they have already built a facility for one?
Type Dublin zoo into Wikipedia and you get abit of info and some pics. I was told that the bull enclosure was being bulit in the second stage, and a bull would arrive about a year after the females.
There are two more females at BElfast Zoo of breeding age too- the mother and her female calf(father was Luka, he went to Port Lympne and now Spain) which was born there some years ago now. Since Jubilee (not a breeder anyway) died, there has been no bull elephant in Ireland. Hopefully a bull at Dublin would be available to the two Belfast females as well....
If we are talking elephant conservation here is another example of an individual elephant clearly of breeding age and prior birthing experience. I my mind Belfast Zoo should opt ot loan out her and her female calf to one of the proven bulls in UK collections to breed. What plans does the Belfast Zoo - which is very conservation oriented and participates in quite a few EEP programmes - plan for Asian elephant? A new house and yard? Bull addition?
Yes, this is another 'difficult' situation, with two breeding aged females and no bull. I heard talk previously that their existing house is inadequate to keep a bull, yet they have had two already, including a very dangerous one- Luka, who previously killed two keepers in Belgrade Zoo... Then Chester's Jubilee- but he was more like a female... Belfast also have one or two older(post-breeding age) females as well so what I would like to see is quite simple here- the mother and calf sent to join the Dublin group when they get their bull, on a permanent basis...
The 2 elelphants were are talking about are Jothi (Vishesh's mother) is actually 39 and Vishesh (10). Of all other elephants only Tina at 43 survives. The other older female Lulu died in 2006.
Didn't they have Judy from Chester also? Did she die a while ago? In answer to your earlier question, i don't know what Belfast's plans for their elephants are. I imagine it won't include getting another male though. I would think Jothi could breed again, having given birth already. If they sent Vishesh to Dublin alone it would mean splitting her from her mother. Of course such a move is hypothetical anyway, but we can live in hope....
Judy .. mmmm .. the ink runs dry there. Can not find anything on her being at Belfast. Is she the cow that gave birth to Jubilee by Noddy (Chester)? The erstwhile Belfast elephants I can recall are Jubilee (died 2003), Birma (died 1988) and Lena (died 2001). Belfast also had a third male Fridolin/Sahib. He resided at the zoo from July 1988 to March 1991. Your suggestion of moving both to Dublin or only Vishesh (breaking the current policy of moving elephants along matriarchal lines) seems fine by me. The only hiccup might be that Berhardine, one of the females already at Dublin Zoo and mother to the latest calf, is a dominant female. Jothi and Vishesh moving there might lead to clashes. However, I find that Jothi might well take up the role of matriarch in the herd, who knows .....
Found the Judy you mentioned. She was born in 1957 and arrived at Chester in August 1961. She was moved to Neunkirchen Zoo in Germany on 16 September 2005 (with companion Kirsty).
Yes, Noddy the little man with a red and yellow car. There was big ears and another man with no legs. It was a great children's show. I don't watch it anymore.
So Judy went to Dublin from Chester first right? And Kirsty was presumably the other Dublin Elephant that left with her for Germany. I think Kirsty was the last elephant at Glasgow zoo. Belfast really needs to enlarge its elephant facility, compared to the rest of the elephant holdings in the UK it is sorely lacking. I wouldn't want to see pregnant cows return to Belfast in the current enclosure. Even Blackpool, with 4 post-reproductive cows, now has a grass paddock for them. Similarly, if Belfast were to only keep elephants of no breeding value due to its inadequate facilities, it would be a shame for any elephant to spend its final years in that house.
Yes Judy was Jubilee's mother at Chester. She must have gone to Dublin, not Belfast. They moved these two old females to Germany when they built the new facility for breeding elephants. NoBBy was Jubilee's father. He escaped and ran amok in fields near the zoo. Had to be shot. He's buried in the Asian rhino/deer paddock... Frodolin/Sahib I believe came from Cricket St Thomas who had Asian elephants for a while(no any more) He must have been there between 'Luka' who went to Port Lympne, but Jubilee.
I've only seen photos, which don't give a real impression of what its like, but it looked pretty drab. They need to rethink Elephants at Belfast, obviously.
I believe the plan in Belfast is to send Jothi and Vishesh to another zoo together where they can breed and aquire some non-breeding females as company for Tina. I am not sure where Jothi and Vishesh are going but I am pretty sure that Dublin would be a bad choice, since they have a very close-knit family unit and adding adult females, especially a female like Jothi who is not very social, is asking for troubles. It is very likely that they would never come along and why destroying the peace in the Dublin group?
Sahib was at Belfast before Luka, before going to Cricket St. Thomas in the 1991. The Cricket St. Thomas facility was far too small to house a bull and the cows didn't accept him, possibly because, as a hand-reared animal, he was badly socialised. Needless to say there was little chance of breeding from him and the park had him shot at the mid-1990s, which caused an outcry if I remember, partly because they had put down a healthy animal, with Lezpig zoo (Sahib was housed here before Belfast) saying they would have taken him back, and because there was allegedly pressure on that part of the park to be redeveloped into a theme park (Cricket St. Thomas was involved with some sort of Noel Edmonds enterprise to create a 'Mr. Blobby' park there, which is partly why euthanising this animal got so much press attention). I don't know whether the remaining females left as a result of this or whether there were plans to remove the elephants and that they 'couldn't' find a new home for the bull.
