Cedars Nature Centre New Collection- Cedars Nature Centre

Hi All,

As some of you may already know I have been in the process of building a new small zoo/education centre for the past year or so.
At times it has been slow going but now we are at a stage where I figured it would be good to share the news with my fellow zoochatters!

Cedars Nature Centre is on a very small site but I hope it will pull its weight in the zoo community.
We have taken over an old pets corner that was run by the council since the 1960's and have inherited some very common pet bird species (budgies, cockatiels, ring necked parakeet and zebra finches). However we are currently building new enclosures from scratch and transforming the site into what will become a new zoo.

Cedars Nature Centre will be free to enter and we will be working with some interesting species especially as the zoo becomes established. As some of you know I am very fond of tenrecs and so there will be at least 2-3 species at opening.

You can follow our progress on our facebook page which is
https://www.facebook.com/CedarsNatureCentre/

 

This looks very exciting Stu. If entry is free, does this mean your funding comes from Broxbourne council? In which case, will this be one of the few municipally-funded zoos in the UK?

Other than the tenrecs - and the inevitable meerkats - what species are you intending to have on show?

Good luck: this corner of Hertfordshire is rapidly becoming a go-to zoo destination!

 

Congratulation stubeanz ! Great to see a ZooChatter making his dream come true ! Wish you all the luck !

 

Thanks Guys, the funding will not come from broxbourne council but from the nature centre itself.
We currently hold a private collection off site which has been funded by our animal lectures that we present and so when we move the collection over to the new site we will continue this side of the business which will pay for the majority of the expenses.
We will also be having paid events onsite and presentations etc. we also hope that because it's free, people will donate if they feel they have had a good experience.

We are working with many volunteer groups and it provides something free for the local community, no matter what your background (as we all know zoos can be quite expensive, especially if you visit as many as we all do!).

In terms of an open date we have said roughly before Christmas but as it's just myself and my business partner building and dealing with it all (although the volunteer groups have been great!) that is a rough estimate, if you follow the Facebook page we will eventually post an open day I'm sure !

As it's a small area we will be moving over all of our species that we currently have (quite common handleable species for the schools etc) most interesting to zoochatters are our breeding pairs of 3 banded armadillo, lesser and greater hedgehog tenrec and eastern indigo snake but eventually I hope to add non handleable species as well and concentrate on small mammals (insectivores, rodents and carnivores) eventually with a couple of primate species.

My passion is the unusual stuff so I'm sure we will have some interesting species in the future!

 

Hi Stu
Sounds exciting - is Cedars park closed now then and are you having the whole site ?
Primates - please pig tailed or crab eating macaques !!!!

 

Yes that's exactly what we are doing, the crowd pleasers are all there, owls, meerkats, skunks and reptile house but then as it's free I can also add animals of my interest and also hopefully try to get some of the smaller species established in the UK also.

Sadly my short tailed opposum died last year, however I would be tempted to get either Virginia opposum or brushtailed possum in the future. Sadly the lifespan of Virginia opposum is the only setback!

 

Hi Gary,

Sadly not (that would be incredible if we had all 46 acres!), we only have the old pets corner area of the park, however it is enough for what we want to do with the place.

No macaques I'm afraid either the two primate species I am thinking off would have to be squirrel monkey sized and under.

 

Stu: any news on when the Nature Centre (zoo!) will be open? Hopefully all is going well.....

 

Mix them together: squirrel monkeys and callitrichids get on fine. Though tamarins can be boisterous. This is how I would.

Though if you like tenrecs I'm guessing one of the primates might be cheidogaleid?

Climate can be a bummer: since visiting Khao Din I was impressed by the outdoor displays of reptiles and the prospect of mixed outdoor reptile-bird-mammal combinations. A British woods is lovely in autumn but the climate calls the shots. Maybe unexplored is the idea of reptiliaries for temperate species: timber rattlers, blue tongued skinks and such.

 

Like others said, really great to see a ZooChat member realizing the dream of running a zoo. Best of luck!

 

It has been announced on Cedars facebook page that they now have a Zorilla. It is a male called 'Ziggy'. Once the Nature Centre opens to the public, he will be the only Zorilla on-show in a European collection

 

I haven't seen one since London had one in the 80's. Where did out come from? Are they kept privately?
A little disappointed to see on there website they refer to the keeping of small "breeds", I assume they mean species (unless they're keeping Yorkshire terriers and the like)

 

There are quite a few in private collections who do breed them. It is more than likely this individual will have come from one of the private collections.

 

Hi All,

Wow, long time since I have posted on zoo chat, as you can imagine I have been rather busy and haven't had much time to explore one of my favourite websites!

I figured I should give you all an update!

Over the past year we have been building CNC with only two of us building and both of us working our day jobs so it has certainly taken longer than we thought but last Friday we had our zoo inspection and it went favourably!

We are now just awaiting our final documents etc and we can then open to the public. We have a rough open day of "the start of August."

To answer a few questions...
The zorilla came from a private collection, we swapped him for our three banded armadillo that had been born earlier this year. He is a stunning animal and I would love to pair him up in the near future, the problem we have is that there is only one unrelated female to him in the UK and unfortunately we are unable to afford the female at present!

I worked with flower the zorilla at PWP and eversince I have wanted to work with the species again!

The website holding page does indeed say rare breeds which is something that I have hated seeing since we had the holding page created. Thankfully a new website will be created soon and the wording can be corrected to something that I would prefer doesn't suggest rare pigs and sheep!

I can add a species list to here when I get around to it but there are a few other interesting species that are in the works that I cannot mention right now.

Hopefully that give a you a little more of an update on our little zoo!

Thanks Stuart

 

Glad to hear about the website update . It'll be great to have zorilla on public display again and look forward to finding out what other species you may be getting.