Some sad news to start 2013 with: White Rhino bull, Hannu has been PTS at the age of 29 due to severe arthritus. This leaves Marwell with 0.2 Marwell rhino dies after battle with severe arthritis (From Hampshire Chronicle) ...on a happier note, a male Pygmy Hippo has now been transfered from Bristol to allow Marwell to begin breeding again Love is in the air
I wonder what the age of the two female Rhinos are? From what I can remember they have all been at the park for quite a long time, wonder what their next move will be, hopefully not another species to be phased out.
Chessington thread is reporting that bull Giraffe, Kismet has left Marwell for the batchelor group there
Yes that was "Sula" , the other female "Kiri" has never bred. The two male calves both went to Flamingoland.
"Hannu" had been suffering from arthritis in his lower legs, particularly the forelegs , for some years and this has got progressively worse. My feeling is that arthritis in Rhinos, as it is with Elephants, is a degenerative condition that is possibly caused by, and certainly aggravated by, keeping these heavy animals on concrete for many years. Hence why so many Elephants are now kept on sand in zoos. "Hannu" also took a few knocks to his lower leg joints from the two females over the years (fairly normal Rhino behaviour) which undoubtedly has`nt helped. He was a lovely animal who craved attention from his keepers.
Western Grey Kangaroo have left the collection. The remaining individuls were re-homed at South Lakes
Which is an interesting development. I had thought that for various reasons the UK Arabian Oryx were being allowed to dwindle away, with no further animals coming in from Europe until all had passed on. Maybe a decision has been made to get things moving? Their return to London would certainly be welcome.
Had a brief visit as was passing on the M3. Was somewhat disappointed to make this discovery! The rheas are going in their paddock, so yet another reduction in number of species. Bit concerned about the okapi, only 2 in male house & appeared one female had whole run of female house, unless any were locked outside, which i would doubt! A couple of years ago they had at least 6, but the numbers now seem to reduce almost every time i visit. The pygmy hippos are now together, which is the only real positive i can think of except that for an awful february day there were a fair number of cars in the car park, so the visitors still seem to be there even if the animals aren't!
Even if that's right, it still doesn't leave much breeding potential to have reduced to one female. Before anyone bangs on about studbook recommendations, my point is that Marwell has by far the best okapi facility in the UK , so should have greater breeding potential than currently.
Just appear to have been unlucky on the Okapi front recently.... 0.1 calf from 2008 was shipped to Basel on studbook recommendation during 2011. The same mother had then given birth to a male in December 2010 but he was a DNS. Then in February 2012 the breeding female in question (Zukisa) died... leaving them with the current 3.1 Hopefully Marwell not going to be left out with the current changes in the Okapi EEP... at least one new female would be very welcome
You are quite right Ian, they were sent to Marwell from London, when London decided to go out of them, Marwell were down to a couple of animals and took them on, they were then taken off-show because they were "surplus" despite having accepted Londons, nobody wanted them so they remained at Marwell. Then during the last two or three years Marwell took over the EEP studbook and has been trying to breed them again. However there is still little interest from other UK zoos in keeping this species to date.
I agree Marwell`s Okapi facility is very good and was developed to be one of the best at the time when John Knowles was especially interested in this species, others equally keen on Okapi were the chief curator and head of that section for many years, which meant a great deal of effort was put into their husbandry, however all three of those key people are no longer there which will largely be the reason for the present situation.
The closure of Marwell continues by stealth....jeez. What is wrong with the people in charge? I know I've asked this before but for Pete's sake what are they up to? Everybody I speak to says how bare and run-down the place looks and they do nothing but empty it out of animals-they either die of old age or get shipped out. I am not renewing my membership in protest at the state of things.
As my comments after my visit at the end of December confirm, I have to agree entirely with you. I seriously considered trading my membership for Colchester this year as i visit both 3-4 times a year, the only thing that stopped me is that Marwell would restrict me to only 1 visit on a Colchester card. Barely a month in and another species lost, on top of the 9 primate species etc i mentioned last time! The okapi and rhino numbers seem to be being left to reduce to nothing as well! Although i didnt go round everything yesterday, i have seen at least 6 empty enclosures on my last 2 visits which is totally unacceptable. If a new entrance is their next project still then they clearly need to rearrange their priorities!
I would put it down to the fact Marwell is nowadays run by a comitteee who have no specific direction to take the park in. I see a similar pattern at Twycross rather.
