Excellent list! Big thanks, geomorph! It's possible to know what species/exhibits are included in the general ticket and which ones must be paid appart? There is a butterfly house at SafariPark?
Basically, only the animals in the Asian field exhibits are unavailable on the basic ticket (those are the animals contained in jbnbsn's post). Everything else should be visible (though, of course, there are numerous higher-price options that can get you better/closer views and potentially the chance to see other off-exhibit species).
The Asian field exhibits are visible from an overlook, nothing too close, however. The butterflies are seasonal, there won't be any more this year.
Thanks jibster and jayjds! I will miss white-lipped deer and some other nice species but I see that I will can see the very most of the species
The black rhinos have been moved into the large South Africa field exhibit. (Sadly my safari bus operator did not distinguish between black or white and simply referred to all of them as rhinos). The tour operator also referred to the giraffes as a group of reticulated and rothchilds (so yes they are together). I used to have an excellent small flipbook of all Asian and African savanna species that you could only get when you took the more expensive caravan tour. This was around 1992. Unfortunately, it was destroyed with several other books in a water pipe break in my old apartment. I do still have the general park guidebook published in 1991. It lists for the mountain habitat Siberian Ibex and Himalayan Tahr. I also remember seeing mouflon there on the old monorail. The guidebook only mentions a few animals for each area and does not give a full list. For Asian Waterhole, they mention Formosan sika deer and Timor rusa deer. The Asian Waterhole has since been changed to Central Africa. The guidebook mentions the following for Asian Plains: barashinga deer, Indian gaur, Javan rusa deer, Persian goitered gazelle, axis deer, blackbuck, Indian rhino. I also remember seeing saiga (yes really).
Did you know what happened with the saigas that they had? It was a breeding group or never a calf born? Ther died one after another? They was translated to another zoo or to the wild?
They had small groups at both the Safari Park and at the Zoo (I saw them in both places). I believe they naturally died out without producing offspring.
No they definitely bred, I saw several youngsters in the nursery kraal over the years, I believe the US population (which also included zoos like Dallas and a few others) just slowly died out due to a lack of new genetic diversity and decreasing birth rates.
