I am willing to pay £5, but for that I expect a concession on the commercial use of my photos. Many zoos have a clause in the small print excluding commercial photographers or charging them a significant extra fee for working in the zoo. I haven't looked recently, but Blackpool's used to be particularly draconian even for amateurs - some of the photos in our Blackpool Gallery may breach the letter of this rule, but I'm sure we can claim it is 'fair use'. Alan
A new arrival has been announced in the form of a male New Guinea dusky pademelon. He will be joined by a female in April.
Yes I got an email from the owner stating the March 1 opening date has been pushed back to March 21 due to construction delays. However, since my trip to Europe will be over before that, he also graciously offered to give me a private tour on my original intended visit date. Very nice indeed!
"Dear supporters RSCC will reopen for spring/summer season on March 21st 2015 and will be open until October 31st 2015! We will have a few nice new species on site." From their facebook page
Today the new website for RSCC has finally gone live: It boasts an impressive species list including... Carnivores: Bush Dog Boky-Boky Clouded Leopard Eastern Aardwolf Fanaloka Fishing Cat Fosa Giant Otter Greater Grison! Smooth Coated Otter Jaguarundi Maned Wolf Malayan Tiger Palawan Bearcat Rusty Spotted Cat Ring-Tailed Vontsira Sumatran Banded Civet Yellow Throated Martin Sun Bear Primates: Sulawesi Tarsier Red-Backed Bearded Saki Golden-Headed Lion Tamarin Pygmy Loris Bengal Slow Loris Pileated Gibbon Fat-Tailed Dwarf Lemur Sambirano Bamboo Lemur Red Ruffed Lemur Birds: Great Hornbill Mindanao Rufous Hornbill Golden Necked Northern Cassowary Goliath Palm Cockatoo Caribbean Flamingo Philippine Scops Owl King Bird of Paradise (yes, really!) African Pygmy Goose Hyacinth Macaw Victoria Crowned Pigeon Reptiles: Sunda Gavial Other Mammals: Red Panda Southern Tamandua Chinese Red & White Giant Flying Squirrel Balabac Chevrotain Monotremes and Marsupials: Spotted Cuscus New Guinea Echidna Greater Forest Wallaby Dusky Pademelon It also (sort of) clears up the confusion over the photography fee.. We do permit photography and video recording at RSCC, however we reserve the right to the use of any photographs or recorded footage taken of the animals at our facility by visitors. By purchasing a photography ticket this permits you to bring in camera equipment to RSCC and use it onsite. Small cameras/mobile phones are exempted from this. When you purchase a photography ticket we will ask for you to email us copies of all photographs or movies taken at RSCC within 1 month of your visit. This is a condition of entry. PHOTOGRAPHY TICKET £ 5.00 [ON TOP OF NORMAL ENTRY TICKET PRICE] These funds go directly to our in situ conservation projects. Obviously still some issues with the website but it's looking good so far... Rare Species Conservation Centre |
This raises two questions, of course: 1) How are they going to define a "small" camera? For instance, my digital camera is a low-spec bridge camera, and as such is physically relatively large but is not a professional camera. 2) How on earth are they going to manage the impact on their email inbox if they are demanding that all photographs and videos are to be emailed to them? For that matter, what if you have taken a shot and deleted it straight away because it is crap - would the gap in filenames be interpreted as trying to get away with not emailing everything? They have addressed the matter to some degree on Facebook too:
They are very sensitive animals, RSSC is doing excellent work on their husbandry. I've seen Philippines tarsier at Bristol. I think I'm very lucky to have done so.
Where does one start, what a line up! Well I guess the gharial was the mystery animal in the box? KING BIRD OF PARADISE!!!! And welcome back to the flying squirrels
King Bird of Paradise is certainly one of the highlights of course, there is no guarantee they will be onshow - and the same goes for the Greater Grison which are another particuarly alluring prospect for me.
Much as I love the RSCC, and much as I am delighted at their re opening with such a wonderful array of species, this move is, to my mind, quite extraordinarily ill thought-out, counter-productive and paranoid. Do they imagine that there are a whole phalanx of enthusiastic amateur photographers somehow making a fortune out of selling their pictures of fanaloka and binturong? And what is a primary motivation for a whole host of adults to go to zoos? Photography. If 'professional' cameras mean SLR cameras, as I suspect they will, this is hardly an especially high cut-off point. And the idea of emailing my snaps of interesting-looking stand-off barriers and warning signs is just bizarre. As is the idea of their having time to process the many thousands of pictures they would thus receive. As is the idea that this very strange policy would be enforceable. All in all, it sounds like the sort of thing that Kim Jong-un would seek to impose, and I can't help but feel it stems from a similar sense of paranoia. There is a definite suspicion of some visitors / interested observers: when visiting the zoo,pretty routine questions about animal numbers, or their provenance, have been batted away, and my impression - possibly wholly unfair - is that the RSCC's owner does not take at all kindly to any sort of criticism. Which is a pity, because this is a tremendous place!
And just to continue the rant - it's not the cost that would bother me at all. The extra £5 certainly makes it a relatively pricey zoo to enter, but that is fine. It's the combination of suspicion (you must be up to no good, and therefore we are going to check your pictures) and fuss (organising photos is an enomrous faff as it is, even without having to send them off to someone!).
What exactly are they going to do if photographers don't e-mail? Sue them? They are entering a very, very dangerous legal minefield there
The species list on the new website is certainly exciting . I wonder if these all will be on show when the Centre re-opens . I notice 2 species no longer listed - golden-cheeked gibbon ( presumably the pair now at Exmoor ) and snow leopard ( elderly specimen ) . I wonder if the red-backed sakis and Balabac mousedeer are new imports or from the stock previously imported and distributed to other collections . It would be good for the European populations if the giant otters and pileated gibbons were new importations .
Yes, I was wondering that. I'm planning a trip down but would like to see everything rather than be told that all the interesting things are offshow. From what I've read, they are rather secretive...
So what are they going to do then if someone takes a photo but doesn't bother to email it to them? Hunt them down?There's actually nothing they can do. RSCC is not the only zoo to hold an animal that no-one else in the country does, and I do not know of any other park that has such a bizarre rule. People taking photos of their day out and uploading them to social media serves as free advertising for the zoo. If RSCC is worried about people taking photos of their animals, they could always go out and take some pics themselves. Im also not sure that just because they're RSCC's animals means that all photos of them legally belong to the RSCC by default. Especially if a person you let into your park took them.
