I missed out on seeing the news report unfortunately, has anyone seen a link available, I looked on the 9 news site, but nothing. I can tell you that Liz Bellward is 100% dedicated to conservation. She left Dreamworld about 5 months ago to start the 'Karma Cats Project'. I support her all the way, as she is a good friend of mine and hope the project goes well. One thing I found about her is that she tends to pick favourites in her cats. At Dreamworld she loved Rahni and would spend a lot more time with her than the rest of the cats. Thats the only real concern I have on Karma Cats.
I just can't understand how - skepticism about the reality of the plans aside - a zoo with half a dozen cat species, a few Aus natives and a petting zoo will cost $50m to build?!?
go easy with that statement Steve, Australia Zoo is giving over $250,000 in financial support to in-situ tiger conservation programs this year alone! But I totally agree with you, DW should be highly commended for it's fantastic efforts. So often, the "scientifically based mainstream zoos" (to quote Ara) justify their conservation claim by breeding a few in captivity, let their marketing machines pump them, and do little, if nothing, for real conservation efforts.
conservation donations Dreamworld has donated to the projects they support just under 200K for this year. If more of the "big" zoos could do more it would go along way to very important field conservation funding.
I thought this to. unless they are planning on having very large open range, moated enclosures. Just a note. I believe (It was a few years ago when I read it) that Dreamworlds Tiger facilities cost $3,000,000 to build, I'm not sure what this includes. It may include the visitor areas and the play areas but still. Tiger Island currently holdS 12 Tigers. I wonder how many enclosures they are planning on building for the big cats and what style of exhibits they will be.
I just came across this thread again whilst trawling for something else, and wondered where Karma Cats was at now with their project. Their facebook (linked to in post #51 above) shows they are still pushing on but apparently no nearer to their goal, although they are fund-raising for a clouded leopard breeding facility in Thailand. This from March last year:
I re-found this old(ish) thread and wondered where the story was at now. I had a look at their Facebook (linked a couple of posts above this one) and not a lot on it apart for photos of cats. The Facebook gives the impression they have given up on the zoo idea and are concentrating on using their fund-raising for the benefit of cats in the wild (poaching patrols in Sumatra, that sort of thing) which I think is a much much better use of funds. However their website has a progression table which shows they are still intent on the zoo: Karma Cats - Progress Tracker (although I can't say if the table ever actually changes: it may sit there idle for all I know).
I just came across this post. Does anyone know what happened with Karma Cats and why they never built a zoo? I couldn't find anything on google - their website no longer exists and there was nothing interesting on their facebook page; it hasn't been updated since August last year.
