The hope was for them to gain regional support and other zoos acquired Chapmans too, but when this didn't happen, Werribee sort of gave up.
Bovine Import Review
- Thread starter Zoofan15
- Start date
Even every decade or two would have sufficed. Auckland established a purebred Grant’s herd from 1.1 imported in 1959 and 1963; and a further 0.2 imported in 1980. Those imports sustained a population (with only minor inbreeding) that remains to this day. It’s only begun to die out thanks to hybridising.
Pearl Coast Zoo sourced many of these from Marwell (as well as from within the region e.g. Pygmy hippopotamus) and arguably surpassed the region’s main zoos of the time, whose ungulate collections were starting to decline around the late 20th century. Many city zoos once held Barbary sheep and numerous antelopes, sadly long gone from their collections.
I get the impression a good part of the problem for most of the major zoos in the past (there were very few regional zoos a few decades ago) was the mind set, most would of been happy with the here and now of what they had to show the public, the thinking likely was not looking forward enough for the next 5 year or even the next 10 years, mixed in with the cost of shipping from overseas (likely the USA or Europe) and strict import regulations was not helpful. Having so few zoos (open range zoos just beginning to appear) and little co-operation between them never helped much. Laid the foundation for what we have today.
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Very true. We’ve seen examples in recent years with common hippopotamus. A lack of regional coordination meant Auckland Zoo couldn’t place surplus male hippos and so steps were taken to control their breeding - the most permanent being the castration of their young bull; which coinciding with the death of his father that year, left them without the option to breed more hippopotami.
There were a number of exchanges between the Australian zoos, but they all had sufficient numbers of bulls in 2013, when Tippi (2004) was exported to Bali - a move that’s come back to bite us.
I would like to see instead of a single person (one person only) species coordinater ,I believe a small group of keeper managers say for example Hippos made up by one senior keeper from each open range zoo/s as a team as in to work together for the long term good for the said species instead in one single persons hands could be problematic if they don't really have an in depth understanding of what's really needed overall for the long term species survival.
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That is indeed the process, there is such a group, is called the TAG (Taxon Advisory Group). The species coordinator simply implements the plan decided on by the group. However, they can only plan around current spaces and animals available at the time. Additional spaces would be a decision for each individual zoo (and in the case of hippos, an expensive decision).I'm sure the TAG would be aware of all the issues discussed here but without commitment from zoo managements for more facilities or imports there would be very little they could do about it.