Reptile park in Victoria

Midgard.Morelia

Midgard.Morelia

Member
Hi guys, I’m relatively new to the idea of building a zoo/wildlife park… though I’ve been thinking about it deeply for the past few months. I have a few questions but firstly I’ll run you guys through my thinking process.

I have a lot of respect for the work that Australian zoos/parks do with venomous reptiles and anti-venoms etc. but I’ve never really seen any focus on pythons and locality subspecies of Australian native reptiles. I know there are 20+ subspecies and locality morphs of carpet pythons alone. And due to designer breeding in the captive industry, wild type, pure genetics for these pythons is few and far between. For conservation reasons (should any wild populations that are locality specific, drop drastically), I would really love to create a non-for-profit wildlife park with a focus on small scale conservation of as many native species as possible. Beginning with reptiles and hopefully extending to mammals, birds, and whatever else I can try to help.

I want to create a park in regional Melbourne, that houses a collections of pairs (or multiple) of as many species as I can have the room for. Realistically there would have to be a number on display, the types that bring crowds which obviously bring money which then goes to more conservation. I know this is a little bit crazy, and gods know I’d never have any chance of doing it on my own, I’ll need as much help as I can find… but before I go asking where I’d get started, I want to know if anyone else has considered doing something similar? Maybe we could work together? Or if there are people who would be interested in being a part of this. I have a feeling it’ll take a small army.

secondly, and I’m not in a rush, but for the sake of beginning, where do I start?
I’ve read a bit, I understand the licensing required, and the people to talk to, (vicroads, water waste, etc) but I honestly don’t know where to begin… planning etc.
 
I’d suggest you do this but set it up privately first and see how you go keeping that many animals and then from there look at expanding it to a public facility. Unfortunately, I can’t see it being an overly popular attraction because the general public likes a carpet Python but isn’t fussed about a Piligia locality Murray Darling Carpet Python for example. The general public will see one carpet or maybe 5 carpets and then get bored pretty quickly. If you expanded your scope to include various native species including birds and mammals (something ARP does very well) that will help with the economic viability of the idea.
 
Josh F said:
I’d suggest you do this but set it up privately first and see how you go keeping that many animals and then from there look at expanding it to a public facility. Unfortunately, I can’t see it being an overly popular attraction because the general public likes a carpet Python but isn’t fussed about a Piligia locality Murray Darling Carpet Python for example. The general public will see one carpet or maybe 5 carpets and then get bored pretty quickly. If you expanded your scope to include various native species including birds and mammals (something ARP does very well) that will help with the economic viability of the idea.[/QUOTE
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I completely agree, you’ve pointed out one of my biggest hurdles/issues so far… Australians aren’t particularly interested in native animals. In a perfect world I would find a balance between conservation of as many varieties of carpet pythons, as well as mammals, birds, other reptiles, in later years… and a park that displays a selection of animals, (therefore eventually self funds). But realistically that is not going to happen.

I think perhaps creating a large and private space maintained by a small collection of like minded individuals, we could atleast start with reptiles and really have a positive impact on wildlife conservation in Australia before progressing to other native species. Obviously it always circles back to funding, which is proving to be a headache but I always knew it would be. I’m just hoping there are people out there who have had the same/similar pipe dream, who’d like to help make it a reality.
 
And just a note, keeping and breeding of Morelia in particular is more considered preservation which is the sustaining of a captive population. Unfortunately thanks to our strict wildlife laws it is incredibly unlikely that those animals would contribute to the actual conservation of a species being the direct addition to the wild population.

I’d suggest you have a flick through some of the previous threads where people have asked similar questions and read through the responses of some current zoo owners that are on the forum to get an idea of how it all works. Rarely do you make money from a zoo style collection. And it will cost likely four times more than you originally planned.
 
Josh F said:
And just a note, keeping and breeding of Morelia in particular is more considered preservation which is the sustaining of a captive population. Unfortunately thanks to our strict wildlife laws it is incredibly unlikely that those animals would contribute to the actual conservation of a species being the direct addition to the wild population.

I’d suggest you have a flick through some of the previous threads where people have asked similar questions and read through the responses of some current zoo owners that are on the forum to get an idea of how it all works. Rarely do you make money from a zoo style collection. And it will cost likely four times more than you originally planned.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I will have a read through
 
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