South Lakes Wild Animal Park South Lakes Safari Zoo News 2024

Status
Not open for further replies.
Baringogiraffe12 said:
*apologises admin, I haven't added to the Safari Zoo group, can somebody do this please?*
Click to expand...

I happened to spot this, so have added the tag. For reference, if you would like to notify Mods of an edit, please use the 'Report' button under the post :)
 
Visited today 28/3

The collection is really dwindling.

Wolves, penguins, flamingos all gone since previous visit.

Big bird Avery at top had no parrots and a lot less birds than previous. Vulture Avery closed unable to walk through.

They seem to have one elderly snow leopard, one elderly otter (Carlos) , two elderly lions and two Andean bears.

The elderly hamadryas alpha was nowhere in sight and there seems to be two younger male baboons both growing (competing?!) to be the new alpha. I don't know enough about heirachy of baboon families but there were several baby baboons in the troop.

Canadian lynx nowhere in sight, but two jaguar's quite playful.

Only saw one tiger - do they just have one elderly male now?

Lemurs - seemed to be a lot less than usual.

One Giraffe off show at the top with others in the Africa building.

Signage was pretty awful.

So many empty enclosures without signs.

Not looking good for visitor numbers or the future of the collection :(
 
alfiethetortois said:
Visited today 28/3

The collection is really dwindling.

Wolves, penguins, flamingos all gone since previous visit.

Big bird Avery at top had no parrots and a lot less birds than previous. Vulture Avery closed unable to walk through.

They seem to have one elderly snow leopard, one elderly otter (Carlos) , two elderly lions and two Andean bears.

The elderly hamadryas alpha was nowhere in sight and there seems to be two younger male baboons both growing (competing?!) to be the new alpha. I don't know enough about heirachy of baboon families but there were several baby baboons in the troop.

Canadian lynx nowhere in sight, but two jaguar's quite playful.

Only saw one tiger - do they just have one elderly male now?

Lemurs - seemed to be a lot less than usual.

One Giraffe off show at the top with others in the Africa building.

Signage was pretty awful.

So many empty enclosures without signs.

Not looking good for visitor numbers or the future of the collection :(
Click to expand...

Currently have 1.1 Sumatran tigers (brother/sister pair - born in 2014). The lynx have an indoor den you can view through glass windows, I saw three in January though they did have four. Snow leopards are 0.1 (born in 2012), the lions are quite elderly (born in 2007 and 2008?) The giraffe at the top of the park is the remaining male (he was born to one of the females down at the bottom).
 
alfiethetortois said:
Visited today 28/3

The collection is really dwindling.

Wolves, penguins, flamingos all gone since previous visit.

Big bird Avery at top had no parrots and a lot less birds than previous. Vulture Avery closed unable to walk through.

They seem to have one elderly snow leopard, one elderly otter (Carlos) , two elderly lions and two Andean bears.

The elderly hamadryas alpha was nowhere in sight and there seems to be two younger male baboons both growing (competing?!) to be the new alpha. I don't know enough about heirachy of baboon families but there were several baby baboons in the troop.

Canadian lynx nowhere in sight, but two jaguar's quite playful.

Only saw one tiger - do they just have one elderly male now?

Lemurs - seemed to be a lot less than usual.

One Giraffe off show at the top with others in the Africa building.

Signage was pretty awful.

So many empty enclosures without signs.

Not looking good for visitor numbers or the future of the collection :(
Click to expand...
I agree that the zoo has declined a lot over the last couple of years, they're really not doing much to shake off their "Britain's worst zoo" reputation. I have wondered in the past if they might be preparing to shut down in the next few years with how much the collection has dwindled and overall quality has dropped, but with the honey badgers arriving a short time ago and the successful rhino breeding, perhaps that isn't the case. I'm guessing the current collection is being slowly phased out and new animals and developments will come slowly, over the span of many years.
 
alfiethetortois said:
Visited today 28/3

The collection is really dwindling.

Wolves, penguins, flamingos all gone since previous visit.

Big bird Avery at top had no parrots and a lot less birds than previous. Vulture Avery closed unable to walk through.

They seem to have one elderly snow leopard, one elderly otter (Carlos) , two elderly lions and two Andean bears.

The elderly hamadryas alpha was nowhere in sight and there seems to be two younger male baboons both growing (competing?!) to be the new alpha. I don't know enough about heirachy of baboon families but there were several baby baboons in the troop.

Canadian lynx nowhere in sight, but two jaguar's quite playful.

Only saw one tiger - do they just have one elderly male now?

Lemurs - seemed to be a lot less than usual.

One Giraffe off show at the top with others in the Africa building.

Signage was pretty awful.

So many empty enclosures without signs.

Not looking good for visitor numbers or the future of the collection :(
Click to expand...

Do you have a problem with older animals for some reason? They have every right to live out their, hopefully extended captive, life. Highlighting 'elderly' not once, twice but SIX times in one post is disquieting at the very least.
 
alfiethetortois said:
The elderly hamadryas alpha was nowhere in sight and there seems to be two younger male baboons both growing (competing?!) to be the new alpha. I don't know enough about heirachy of baboon families but there were several baby baboons in the troop.
Click to expand...

The social structure of Hamdryas baboons is normally that each male has a small harem of 2-3 females and babies. Of course it depends on the ratio of males/females in a group- if insufficient males they are likely to aquire bigger harems.

As to the future of South Lakes zoo/safari Park- since the changeover to new management after David Gill left, there has been very little news or comment on here about it compared to what went before. From your notes I do wonder if closure might be the end result in a few years' time.
 
I preferred it when South Lakes was unusual in specialising in kangaroos and their relatives.
It has black-faced western grey kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus melanops), parma wallabies (Notamacropus parma), red kangaroos (Osphranter rufus) and western woylies (Bettongis penicillata ogilbyi)

It used to keep agile wallabies (Notamacropus agilis), red-necked wallabies (N rufogriseus), tammar wallabies (N eugenii), brush-tailed rock wallabies (Petrogale penicillata), long-nosed potoroos (Potorous tridactylus) and swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor)
 
GaryA said:
Do you have a problem with older animals for some reason? They have every right to live out their, hopefully extended captive, life. Highlighting 'elderly' not once, twice but SIX times in one post is disquieting at the very least.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise I'd written elderly six times, because I wasn't counting

I was just pointing out with a lot of the animals being older, kept singularly or non breeding ages, the zoo could easily reach a point where there isn't much of a collection at all quite quickly in a zoo which is already quite diminishing.

I really have no problems just viewing the older animals personally, but I don't think it's common zoo practice for this to be the case.

The lake district wild animal park has an old Lar Gibbon called Brian who is really interesting to watch.
 
Dassie rat said:
I preferred it when South Lakes was unusual in specialising in kangaroos and their relatives.
It has black-faced western grey kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus melanops), parma wallabies (Notamacropus parma), red kangaroos (Osphranter rufus) and western woylies (Bettongis penicillata ogilbyi)

It used to keep agile wallabies (Notamacropus agilis), red-necked wallabies (N rufogriseus), tammar wallabies (N eugenii), brush-tailed rock wallabies (Petrogale penicillata), long-nosed potoroos (Potorous tridactylus) and swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor)
Click to expand...

Yes it used to have a lot more macropods, back in the good old days of Mr Gill being in charge,but they also had a very high turn over of animals, because of unsuitable housing/conditions.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Dassie rat said:
I preferred it when South Lakes was unusual in specialising in kangaroos and their relatives.
It has black-faced western grey kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus melanops), parma wallabies (Notamacropus parma), red kangaroos (Osphranter rufus) and western woylies (Bettongis penicillata ogilbyi)

It used to keep agile wallabies (Notamacropus agilis), red-necked wallabies (N rufogriseus), tammar wallabies (N eugenii), brush-tailed rock wallabies (Petrogale penicillata), long-nosed potoroos (Potorous tridactylus) and swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor)
Click to expand...

The problem with those days was that David Gill ran the studbook for most of those species, and used his authority as a de-facto means of replacing all the animals which were killed or died at the collection.... with the upshot that he rapidly made his way through the vast bulk of the European captive population for agile, tammar and swamp wallaby (with only the latter ever really recovering after he lost the studbook) and entirely exhausted the European captive population of the brush-tailed rock wallabies.

So.... diversity within a single collection, but at far too high a cost to diversity within European collections as a whole.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
The problem with those days was that David Gill ran the studbook for most of those species, and used his authority as a de-facto means of replacing all the animals which were killed or died at the collection.... with the upshot that he rapidly made his way through the vast bulk of the European captive population for agile, tammar and swamp wallaby (with only the latter ever really recovering after he lost the studbook) and entirely exhausted the European captive population of the brush-tailed rock wallabies.

So.... diversity within a single collection, but at far too high a cost to diversity within European collections as a whole.
Click to expand...


That's really interesting to read.

The animals all do seem to live in improved habitats with enrichment. I'll never forget when during the Gill days there were some interesting mixed exhibits and many animals just 'disappearing'.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to all the currently empty enclosures.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
The problem with those days was that David Gill ran the studbook for most of those species, and used his authority as a de-facto means of replacing all the animals which were killed or died at the collection.... with the upshot that he rapidly made his way through the vast bulk of the European captive population for agile, tammar and swamp wallaby (with only the latter ever really recovering after he lost the studbook) and entirely exhausted the European captive population of the brush-tailed rock wallabies.

So.... diversity within a single collection, but at far too high a cost to diversity within European collections as a whole.
Click to expand...

That is just the tip of the iceberg as I suspect you well know, there was a lot more than that just disappeared from tiger to tapir without a truthful explanation as too what happened.
 
There has been some more negative stuff about South Lakes in the press, someone claims to have been undercover and getting some pretty damning evidence - although the zoo owners claim that most of it is from before they owned the zoo. Nonetheless, its not good for PR.

I've attached the link but if this is an issue then feel free to remove it.

AOL is part of the Yahoo family of brands
 
We recently visited & overall welfare seemed low, particularly in relation to the elderly animals which were housed singly with no ethical explanation given when we spoke to one of the keepers
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top