28 tassie devils born this year, as well as record breeding for helmeted honeyeaters, orange-bellied parrots and mountain pygmy possums at Healesville Sanctuary. Record breeding season for Healesville sanctuary - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
thats fantastic! with just one devil shy of 60 heallesville has the largest captive population of devils outside of tasmania. with they could send at least a couple of retiree's to melbourne.
My girlfriend and I say this everytime we go through the completely underwhelming Australian section. They also need more than the standard ONE koala on display, and more macropods. There is room for 20 or so in the walk-thru area. Instead, there seems to be 2 or 3. I know they want to leave Healesville as the premier Victorian zoo for natives, but it's a bit ridiculous when the vast majority of international tourists who visit Zoos Victoria campuses a) visit Melbourne and b) visit Melbourne to see Australian animals.
and yet melbourne used to have a really good native collection - both common and southern hairy nosed wombats, both northern and southern koalas, yellow-footed and brush tailed rock wallabies, dorcopsis wallabies etc... but, for the most part i actually like their smaller more specialised collection now. they seem to favour hold non-victorian species over local ones, which lends to a more "exotic" showcase of australian species. for example there are no longer any eastern greys at melbourne. the zoo only keeps red and kangaroo island western greys. likewise the common wombats have gone and now the zoo only displays the southern hairy nosed variety. but following this trend, it could still be better. i would like top the the YF rock wallabies return, and the for the zoo to act as a home non breeding devils retired from heallesville. likewise, since the australian section is predominantly arid themed its is astounding that they (and so many other zoos) don't take advantage of one of the very few diurnal marsupials we have by displaying numbats. there are some really nice elements to melbournes rather understated australian precinct. i think a few extra species and better koala exhibit might be all it takes to make it a zoochatter favorite.
Lets not go back here. We have already discussed numbats on another thread and the biggest problem to keeping numbats well is having a steady supply of live termites (of the correct species). It would require a huge amount of resources (staff, time and money) to maintain several animals, that most visitors wouldn't get excited about. MZ has the potential to have a brilliant native collection that doesn't compete with HS, without resorting to troublesome numbats.
I thought it was 31? Either way I went down and had a look at the enclosures.. pretty amazing setup they have going on. And more upgrades on their way! They also had some success with a _____frog.. The other thing they have going on.. they are using sparrows to track the birds they release either that, or the sparrows are the test, and if all goes well, same method will be used on the other birds. But it's all very exciting and good news!
