Visited in late august, able to report some new (very interesting) avian species; solitary tinamou, moustached babbler, and white-tailed jay. Former two being inside the tropical hall, latter being right outside of it, in a standalone aviary. In other news, I couldn't see any moose anywhere, although they don't exactly have a lot of hiding space... Any news on where they could have gone?
Monde Sauvage will add the Capra falconer/ Markhor to their collection, as annouced on the park's facebookpage.
The Markhors are not on display yet, they will get a exhibit near to the parking/ petting zoo across the wapiti. The last puma is also not visibile (it was an older animal, this animal may have died?). New and visible are the giant anteaters (2) next to the South-American car-safari (seperated from the cars). The group with chimpansees has been grown in an attractive group now, with several youngsters (also one recent birth). We counted +10 animals today.
Interesting development relating to the chimpanzees: They are now allowed to breed? What has changed (their subspecific or "hybrid"/"unknown" status?
Their is no official ban on breeding non-subspecific animals. The EEP's main idea is to discourage breeding of the Western and Central subspecies, but to let some hybrid-groups remain for now. In the end this is also not something that can be forced, so any zoo's that stopped breeding hybrids are doing this out of goodwill actually.
As I heard it, if we'd rely on pure animals only, the breeding wouldn't be sustainable. Oh it absolutely can be forced...
The Chimps are not owned by the EEP, and as white tigers show us EAZA fails to force such things. Both programs should be sustainable on their own if managed well, so that shouldn't be a problem. Especially the western program allready has a quite large population, with 10+ zoos and over 100 animals by now. The Central program is in more problematic waters, but this can still be solved.
What exactly in case of white tigers is a failure? How many EAZA institutions bred them recently? They are on the phase out in most zoos, but rather than selling them outright to the private sector, the zoos rather keep them until they die and that is the right thing to do. And curators indeed do have way how to sort of punish you...once you don't follow curator's reccommendations, then he doesn't have to give you good animals. Not everyone does that, but I indeed saw cases of this happening in both positive (you are cooperating well within the EEP so I give you this female that is extremely valuable) and negative (you weren't listening to my reccommendations last couple of years, so I won't give you new animals)
In the case of the tigers, you do have a point. It has been a few year since an EAZA zoo has bred them other than Amneville which was thrown out because of a multitude of things. It does indeed give you a bad reputation, but the animals are still not the property of the EEP. If some zoos just decide to pull their hybrid groups out of the program, that should in theory be possible. Also the EEP included chimps in non-EAZA parks as well, which they have even less control over. Although it is not encouraged, importing from non-EAZA zoo's is not uncommon.
Not taking away the argument that with breeding hybrid chimpanzee you are recreating the issue which led to a breeding stop in the first place to stem the tide with breeding animals with little or no conservation value and taking up valuable spaces that should and could have been otherwise taken up. May I also remind you that Monde Sauvage is a member of EAZA and thus held to the criteria set by the organisation for membership and active participation in conservation breeding programs. Further, in this set up ownership of animals is deemed to reflect a different category and mode of operation on ownership as otherwise might be expected to be covered under that term.
5 Southern Screamers chicks hatched on August 29th: And 2 Binturongs arrived at the start of September:
By the end of november (fingers crossed regarding COVID-delays) the Markhors should arrive in Monde Sauvage. Last week we finally saw some progress in the exhibit.
