Safaripark Beekse Bergen Safaripark Beekse Bergen

The birth of three Siberian tiger cubs at the Beekse Bergen was announced yesterday.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=606070389912408

 

Zootierliste lists 1.0 Cape fur seal in Beekse Bergen. Does anyone know if it's already on display and if more fur seals are coming soon?

 

More Fur seals are certainly planned, I didn't see the listed Fur seal uet today... Only 4 Californian sea lions.

 

Will they share the lake?

 

The Fur seal is in the Safari resort in the same enclosure as the seals that they have.

 

That explains then.

I thought the original idea was to have the Fur seals and Sea lions share the lake and they got the Sea lions first because these are more easy to train to get the food at the right place etc. But that plan seems to have been changed

Overall I was a bit disappointed yesterday as new enclosures feel very cheap and in the case of the Sloth bears (mixed with Small-clawed otter and Corsac fox) it was worse than the old enclosure. The walking safari has also seen quite a species reduction with enclosures now standing empty or filled with duplicates. Compared to a few years ago Tapirs, Axis deer, Warthog, Giant heron, Striped hyena and Red duiker were gone (as well as Dhole and Serval which are gone for somewhat longer already). There is now also a huge Ring-tailed lemur walkthrough where they used to have Capybara, Squirrel monkey, Guanaco, Macaws, Caracara, Pink-backed pelican and a very nice S-American aviary.... I don't see the reason why, as there is ample space but the walking safari is more empty now. The focus seems to be completely on having as many crowd-pleasers species visible anywhere and forgetting diversity.

 

I also heard of plans for cayaking oppurtunities in the water with the sea lions

 

It's been a while since I visited the Beekse Bergen, but all this doesn't sound very motivating to me to plan a repeat visit. I was already not very pleased with them only displaying some animals to the people in the Resort (which I also believe took away some of the natural feel and surroundings of the park) and now they seem to be downgrading their collection and making the walking safari far less attractive in favor of whatever pleases crowds and brings in bucks.

That to me sounds like a disaster waiting to happen and like a very bad idea.

Sea lions can definitely inflict some seriously nasty bites and I don't think that's a desirable kind of animal interaction. Why take that kind of risk?

 

I can already imagine the news headlines ''French tourist attacked by bull sea lion'' or whatever other issues it could cause. It doesn't seem like a good attraction to me for both the humans and the animals. Imagine someone trying to slap a sea lion with a paddle, so much can go wrong.

 

A gorilla is born in the Beekse Bergen

 

Mother of the new-born Gorilla is Kisiwa .

 

Sexes of the new Amur tiger-babies is known : 2 males and a female :

 

This week a Common waterbuck was born at Beekse Bergen :

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=447788586040398

 

On June 9 a third Gemsbok was born this year .

 

For the first time at Beekse Bergen a Californian sea-lion was born :

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2362985553978958

 

Why do elephants still not reproduce? There are 4 cows suitable for breeding and still nothing. I think there's a problem with the bull. Calimero had only one offspring in 2006. I heard that they performed AI at Sabi in 2016. Unfortunately unsuccessfully.

 

2 Harbour seals born at Beekse Bergen - a first breeding-result for the Zoo. The Harbour seals are not visuable for the "normal" visitors and only if you stay in the resort, you can see them...

 

Cape thick-knee hatched .

 

When visiting Beekse Bergen, is it possible to see everything on foot - or are there parts that can only be seen if one takes a car in?

 

Majority of it is available to be seen on foot - there is a large drive-through safari however that houses some species not visible to walking visitors (such as banteng, nilgai and red buffalo).
There are also two other methods of transport through the park - a boat safari that takes you along the huge lake on one side of the park and gets you closer views of the yaks and blackbuck, as well as the sea lions (if memory serves, can’t remember anything else of note that you can’t see clearly from the walking path), and there’s also a bus safari which drives you straight through the African hoofstock paddock by the entrance (wildebeest, zebra and waterbuck are the species I remember here).
Also, there are a few species/subspecies listed on ZTL for the park that are only in the resort area - such as the odd subspecies of giraffes (kordofan for example), the fur seals and the black rhino.

My personal recommendation for a visit would be to just do the walking safari first and then do the drive through after, but if you don’t have a car I would say you can still see almost the entire park just from walking