Wingham Wildlife Park - End Of Year News Round-up 2010 To all of our visitors, 2010 has been a great year for Wingham Wildlife Park with many new additions coming to the park, and an increase of visitors coming through our gates as word gets around about the changes and improvements which have been going in at the park since its takeover in 2008. So please read on an gain an insight in to what this year has meant for us and some of what you can expect for 2011! Firstly as I have mentioned above we have had a steady increase in visitors which is great news for us as well as being reassuring in that it shows us that we are moving in the right direction with the park in general. Hopefully we can look forward to a further increase in visitors over the coming years as there are still so many people who do not realise that the park exists or are not aware of the changes we have made. Any help which you can give us in this manner is great for the park and as people always say, word of mouth is the best kind of advertising! On a similar note we are working on improving the experience which people get from our Face Book page, so if you have an account on the social networking site why not join us as a fan (our page address is below, or search for Wingham Wildlife Park while logged on to Face Book). It is a great place to keep up to date with quick bursts of news, fun facts, photos, videos and special events... We hope to also get people more involved with a few competitions on there for 2011! Now that I have that out of the way some of the more interesting facts about our park for the past year. We hope that you have managed to all see our new additions and are aware of the breeding success which we have had over the past 12 months. However a lot has happened lately and it is easy to miss things or forget so please find a quick rundown of the changes which have occurred in our collection and enclosures below: Reptile House: A huge amount of work has gone in to the reptile house over the past 12 months as the refurbishment of the middle aisle has gone ahead and allowed us much more space and more efficient enclosures for keeping these beautiful creatures. We have had far too many new additions come in here to discuss each separately so please find them in list form: · Frilled Dragons · Argentinean Horned Frog · Tokay Gecko · Indian Ornamental Tarantula · Arizona Desert hairy Scorpion · Caribbean Land Hermit Crabs · Black & White Argentinean Tegu · Bibrons Geckos · Giant Asian Forest Scorpion · West African Dwarf Crocodiles · White Lipped Tree Vipers · Green Anoles · Brown Anoles · Cuban Crocodile · Common Snapping Turtle · Bumble Bee Toads · Golden Mantellas · African Clawed Frogs · Cane Toads · Zebra Knee Tarantula · Plumed Basilisks · Gold Dust Day Geckos · Girdle Tailed Lizard · Grays Monitors White Cheeked Gibbon: We have a single male White Cheeked Gibbon at our park who lives next door to our Agile x Mueller’s Gibbons. Primates should generally not be kept in enclosures on their own, but this male has been known to be very aggressive with cage mates and seems to be more than happy with being close to the other species of Gibbon... if anything he seems to be a little in love with Vera our female Agile x Mueller’s Gibbon. He is a studbook animal who has not been castrated so who knows, maybe in the future he will be able to share an enclosure with a suitable females who can stand up for herself with him! For now he seems very content with his bachelor life. Goeldi’s Monkeys: This species is another great studbook species for us being part of the Goeldi’s Monkey EEP (European Endangered species Program). Our original group has been split up by us to give us 3 seperate unrelated groups to allow us to breed these animals with 3 distinct genetic lines. Primate Rescue From Israel: In one of our so far biggest rescue projects we braught in 2 groups of small primates from Israel. We had a group of Squirrel Monkeys arrive at the park as well as a group of Tufted Capuchins. These two groups came from a rescue centre which takes in primates from the pet trade and laboratories. The Squirrel Monkeys came from a breeder who was breeding from wild caught adults illegally, while the Capuchins were the breeding group for a program hoping to produce and train Capuchins for use in helping people with disabilities. Later in the year a new male was added to our group of Capuchins in the form of Pablo who came to use from Munster zoo in Germany. He had been kicked out of his old group by the alpha male after he had been caught mating with females behind the alpha males back. He has been welcomed in to our much smaller group with no real problems of that sort. Reindeers: A very big hit with us, especially at the moment are our 2 new Reindeer which came to us from Dudley Zoo. We have got a female who is 4 years old and a male who is currently 7 months old. They had been trained over the past few weeks to walk around the park on lead ropes and are doing very well. The male especially has become very accustomed to the visitors in the park and is now more than happy to be stroked by the children (and adults alike). They will still be led around the park several times each day until Christmas eve. Birds From Tilgate: Sadly our male Kookaburra died this year, after having been at the park almost as long as the park has been here itself, however because of this age it is not something which came of a massive surprise to our keepers. We are very glad however that before he died, he was able to live in the brand new enclosure which he had been moved in to with the Pheasants for a while. We did use this opportunity however to bring a new male who was barely 6 months old when arriving, to the park. He has settled in very well after travelling from Tilgate wildlife centre and with a bit of luck we will have a few babies over the next few years. A new bird has also been added to our Tropical House bird collection in the form of a Yellow Backed Chattering Lory. She has joined our Black Winged Lory in moving around the tropical house and keeping an eye on the visitors. The Lorys are a beautiful group of birds and add a lot of life and quick flashes of bright colours to the tropical house. We managed to also bring a lot of new water fowl to our top lake which is now teaming with life! We managed to secure a total of 17 ducks from Tilgate which has really added some character to the lake. The birds are all in perfect condition and look stunning, with the 2 species being Carolina Wood Ducks and Mandarin Ducks. Finally our Golden Pheasant male was able to sigh a breath of relief after having lived on his own for several years, when we were able to introduce a young females to his aviary. Quail & Guinea Fowl: The day after the massive bird move from Tilgate to us, we also managed to get 10 further birds to add to our collection. The first were 4 new Guinea Fowl to add to the couple of birds we already had roaming the park. This little gang now runs around the park as a single group and are the best alarm system you can hope for with their load call when anything startles any members of the group. At the same time we also picked up 6 young Asian Quails which live in the Parrot House. We had looked in to some birds to live at the bottom of our mixed Finch aviary to add some life to that area, and this group certainly do that, while also acting as excellent hoovers for all the seeds dropped by the Finches. Humboldt’s Penguins: By far the biggest project which we have ever undertaken at the park is the new Penguin enclosure, which is nestled between the top lake and Ring Tailed Lemur walk through enclosure. This enclosure was put together to house a group of 10 birds which we received from Seaview Wildlife Encounter on the Isle of Wight. These birds coming to Wingham were a great opportunity for us because they are the only Penguins on display at a zoo in Kent. To celebrate we had a grand opengin for them on the 23rd of September which was a massive success with free face painting and a live radio broadcast from the park! Bamboo Lemurs: Our newest additions have so far not been mentioned in a newsletter this year because they are such a new arrival. We received a pair of studbook animals from the Rare Species Conservation Centre in the form of Sambirano Bamboo Lemurs, which is a very cute species we are really looking forward to working with. They are currently housed by the top lake in the housing quarters of our Lemur Island. We have had a number of animals move to the park over the past 12 months and please do forgive me if there are any which have been forgotten, we are expanding so quickly it can be difficult to lose track of when the animals had arrived. However as well as bringing in animals from other collections we have had a lot of births over the last 12 months with our collection. Many of these babies have already been moved on to other zoos around the world where they will make great additions to their respective new homes. Please see a list below of all the species which had babies this year: · Micro Pigs · Bennett’s Wallabies · Parma Wallabies · Ring Tailed Lemurs · Red Ruffed Lemurs · Black & White Ruffed Lemurs · Common Marmosets · Bearded Dragons · Bibrons Geckos · Prairie Dogs · French Lop Rabbits · African Pygmy Goats · Vietnamese Pheasants · Speckled Mouse Birds · Rhea · Mandarin Ducks Work has been going ahead very quickly all of this year as you can see from all of the above and not only with the animals after we also managed to complete our new adventure play area at the start of the year, as well as the new refurbished toilet block by the cafe. We know that it is not only the animals which make the visit a success and have tried to ensure that our facilities match the rest of the parks progress. Our work has however not stopped there and we have got a number of further projects under way for the coming year, and I can confirm that a big project which should be ready in time for Easter is the new education centre which has replaced the old soft bill aviary. The education centre will be available for us by schools as well as being the new venue for our hands on animal encounters. It will be the central hub for all of our education work with various materials being on display to the public, and hope that everyone will be able to really benefit from the new building when it is complete. It will also be home to a number of primates who will have brand new enclosures built along one side of it. We hope that this will start a brand new chapter in our education work giving us room to work with more schools on hands on encounters while also opening up opportunities for conferences and special events! All of this work is very important for us but we do require your help with being able to complete our goals and making the park a more successful experience for anyone who comes to see us! Even just coming to the park and telling your friends and family about the park goes a long way towards helping the park, but we are also running a couple of recycling initiatives which you can get involved in to help us raise the required funds for these projects. Firstly we are collecting used stamps so if you have much mail come through with postal stamps on please collect them for us and they will be put to good use... Especially the festive designed ones which will be abundant at the moment. Secondly we are collecting old mobile phones to recycle. So if you have a mobile phone which you no longer use, or even one which is broken please save them and bring them in to us to allow us to imp[rove the education facilities for the areas schools and give us the opportunity to rescue a further animal from more unfortunate circumstances next year. If you are getting a new phone for Christmas, please don’t just throw your old one away or forget it in a chest of draws, put it to good use! Thank you very much for taking the time to read through what has happened at the park over the past 12 months, and I hope that it has awakened some fond memories of your visits or has told you about something new which you did not know about. Our website has much more information about what has gone on at the park lately, including all of our new experiences (including a Ring Tailed Lemur Experience and Penguin Feeding Experience)! Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all From Everyone at Wingham Wildlife Park
