A "new" zoo is going to be opened at April 19 2014, Zoo Veldhoven. It's on the ground were for some time the now closed NOP was. It seems to be completly renovated and keeping a wider range of animals ( NOP was mainly a birdpark ).
Here's hoping the new collection will still hold some of the treasures that were at NOP - I know that a fair few things remained on-site.
Any idea what work has been done to the site? it certainly needed quite a bit of attention. And what about the collection - how many of those treasures (cow bird, cock of the rock, Peruvian owl - and many others) remain?
Article ( in Dutch ) and nice video about this zoo which opens it's gates this month. Looks quite nice : Zoo Veldhoven pronkt ook met roofvogels
Red-tailed black cockatooescaped. Now they have asked by newspaper, television and the social media to look-out for this bird.
During 2 following nights theves have visited Zoo Veldhoven and stolen 30 Amazons and 2 males Hyacinthine macaws !
Dutch zoos are normanly of a very high standard but even so most of the zoos I've visited over the last few years try to bring the level of quality even higher ! So I had high expectation today when I visited Zoo Veldhoven after a break of 2 years but was realy disappointed ! The zoo itself and many enclosures were quite dirty, many enclosures had disappeared, others were empty, a large part of the zoo was closed and a large part of the signs were on the wrong enclosure or there were no signs at all ! In the part which was closed for the public last time a large part of the crane collection was housed and from the part which was still public today, I could see there were still some crane enclosures but hardly visiable ! With the birds of prey many species were not on public-view and it seemed that in every second enclosure some Steller's sea eagles were housed ( must have been at least 8 aviaries with this species ! On ZooChat we lately had a discusion about this zoo keeping Sao Tome Barn owls and this was one of the focus-species for today but..... when I asked a keeper he told me he didn't know anything about this species kept here ! Also the Bare-necked fruitcrows are not longer kept, I was told they had sold them to another European zoo but I don't believe that and guess both birds have passed away . Also the number of Amazones was markely smaller as on my last visit and althrough 30 were stolen ealier this year it was realy remarkeble how much the number had went down. Next to the dissapeared enclosures and empty enclosure it was sad to see how few new enclosure had been added over the passed 2 years. A lot of negative observations but even so it still is a nice zoo with still a lot of intresting species ( esp. parrots and birds of prey ).
A great shame to hear about the losses to the collection, along with the indications of general decline..... particularly sorry to hear about the fruitcrows - another Cotinga lost within Europe As for the following: This suggests that the species was lost from the collection prior to the keeper coming to Veldhoven, as it was most certainly present: | Photozoo Collection
What a shame. I hope they show up somewhere else, like the hornbill collection and of course the dwarf cassowary.
Zoo Veldhoven under new management seems reminiscent of now ill-fated … Blackbrook in the UK! Sad that re-development of the site under new ownership is a bit of a miss-and-miss, one wonders if the new owner really has any clue at all about running a renowned bird collection.
Zoo Veldhoven has again new owners ( a Belgium couple ) and will be closed for a winter-break. In april next year the park will open again. Here a little history of the place. 1987 a dutch parrot-dealer founded the Nederlandse Opvang Papegaaien ( Dutch Asylum Parrots ). Unwanted and neglected parrots were housed at his home but the number was so large that soon another place had to be found. 1992. On an area of 9 hectare the NOP opened on the current site in Veldhoven. 2013. In January the park was decleared bankrupt. 2013. In March a well-known privat-keeper of Birds of Prey took over the place and started to renovate it. 2014. In April the park was re-opened for the public. 2016. In Oct. the park came in new ownership of a Belgium couple.
Large shipment of birds of prey arrived from a sanctuary in Spain. Among the species are : -black kite -marsh harrier -short-toed eagle -bonelli's eagle -booted eagle
Just re-opened a week ago by the new owners, thiefs have visited the park ( again ), 2 Cockatoos were stolen : Zoo Veldhoven net open en de eerste kaketoes zijn al gestolen... maar ze kunnen ze terugkopen
Visited the park yesterday and the new owners are cleaning and renovating the place at several places. The signs however are still not always at the right place and in many occasions not there at all. Noted several species which are not mentioned yet on Zootierliste, a few exmples being : - Black-shouldered kite ( see Black-shouldered kite | ZooChat ) - Snowy-crowned robin-chat - Songthrush ( see Song thrush | ZooChat ) - Peking robin - Great tit ( see Great tit | ZooChat ) None of these species had a sign on their enclosures... Have to work out my pictures and notes but I'm sure there where more species new to the collection ( as well as a lot of species which have left the collection - or at least I didn't see during this visit ).
