The animals were up for sale to whoever wanted them when the ranch was sold. I don't know what remains there currently. The likes of lechwe, kudu, etc are long gone though.
i found a reference a while back saying when the Oryx were transferred to Mary Rive from Lord McAlpines nearby property, they started with 300 oryx and had since doubled that number, but only 2 had been shot as part of the hunting operation. There must be many more now!
I would be very surprised if there were a lot at pearl coast zoo they really did not have that much room however no number at Mary River would surprise me it could be huge!
Dear me, and I thought that Australia had very strict IRA import / export regulations in place! Reading between the lines of the Mary River endroite, it would seem authorities are simply uninterested and unconcerned (which to me - to put it mildly - is quite surprising). What next?
I'm not sure what your "import / export regulations" refers to. The animals are already in Australia. And they are privately owned stock, so sales should only be governed by state laws. But as I said, I only know that the animals were for sale and I do not know the current situation with them.
International Scimitar-horned Oryx Studbook 2020 I finally got around to look through the latest international studbook for Scimitar-horned Oryx. There are currently around 169 Scimitar-horned Oryx in Australasian zoos as of the 29th January 2021 which is quite an increase from 2019’s figure of 139. Monarto’s herd has increased significantly to now 52 animals! Some of the births in late 2019 were not recorded in the previous studbook hence the leap in numbers. There were a couple of deaths (around 10) and a transfer of a male from Werribee to Monarto recorded in the studbook but I only included births and current population figures below. Full studbook: https://www.marwell.org.uk/media/other/1._scimitar-horned_oryx_isb_2020-compressed.pdf Altina Wildlife Park – 38 (22.15.1) oryx as of December 2020; one (1.0) oryx was born in March 2020 Monarto Safari Park – 52 (19.29.4) oryx as of December 2020; there was a whopping 13 (5.4.4) successful oryx births in 2020 and one (1.0) in January 2021 Orana Wildlife Park – New Zealand’s last two (2.0) oryx were still alive as of December 2020 Taronga Western Plains Zoo – 41 (19.21.1) oryx as of December 2020; there were no oryx births at Dubbo during 2020 Werribee Open Range Zoo – 36 (18.18) oryx as of December 2020; there were six (2.4) oryx births in 2020 and one (1.0) in January 2021
Thats not a bad number for just a handful of the regional zoos to hold. Not real sure why the NZ zoos are losing interest with them. Also having the possible hundreds at Mary River as a source would be of help to the captive population within the region!
