Wildwood Discovery Park Wildwood Escot News

Unrelated to the new arrival, but this news has reminded me how much Escot has developed over recent years. When I first visited, wild boards, red squirrels, otters and birds of prey were all it had on offer in terms of exotic animals. When I returned a few years back, they had added wildcats, lynxes and even wolves. Now bears and arctic foxes have arrived since then, and a return visit is starting to feel long-overdue!
 
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Brownie said:
Diego the Brown bear has arrived at the Wildwood Trust from Orsa Predator Park for his temporary stay ahead of being moved on to Jimmy’s Farm once his enclosure is built.

Rescued Swedish bear arrives in Devon via Eurostar https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-67307708
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BBC article mentions the only other animal left was a Lynx. Anyone know if it was also rescued or will/has been euthanized? Would be a shame if so.

Amazing that Diego could be saved though. I imagine it's not easy finding a home for an adult male Brown bear.
 
Fresco3 said:
BBC article mentions the only other animal left was a Lynx. Anyone know if it was also rescued or will/has been euthanized? Would be a shame if so.

Amazing that Diego could be saved though. I imagine it's not easy finding a home for an adult male Brown bear.
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Question is where would the Lynx go if a new home is found ?
 
Wildwood Escot are now fundraising to bring a pair of one-year-old European brown bears, named Malenky and Nanuq, from a rescue centre in Belgium.
Their mother was rescued from northern Ukraine, brought to Poland, passed through several different zoos and then ended up in the rescue centre, where she gave birth to her twins. They have now outgrown the rescue centre enclosure, and the hope is to integrate the two cubs with the existing bears, Mish and Lucy.

Information comes from the Wildwood Kent Facebook page.
 
DesertRhino150 said:
Wildwood Escot are now fundraising to bring a pair of one-year-old European brown bears, named Malenky and Nanuq, from a rescue centre in Belgium.
Their mother was rescued from northern Ukraine, brought to Poland, passed through several different zoos and then ended up in the rescue centre, where she gave birth to her twins. They have now outgrown the rescue centre enclosure, and the hope is to integrate the two cubs with the existing bears, Mish and Lucy.

Information comes from the Wildwood Kent Facebook page.
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Do any zoos in Europe or UK breed brown bears?
Or is it mainly rescues
 
Wildwood Escot have announced they will be launching the Native Invertebrate Recovery Centre in partnership with the rewilding organisation Restore. The first species they will be working with are the Common Glow Worm (Lampyris noctiluca) and the European Tadpole Shrimp (Triops cancriformis).
 
Now I don't know if this is the right page for this, this has come from Wildwood Devon social media

Some exciting news coming this week

Stay tuned!

Not a lot to go on I know unfortunately but just been announced
 
DesertRhino150 said:
Wildwood Escot are now fundraising to bring a pair of one-year-old European brown bears, named Malenky and Nanuq, from a rescue centre in Belgium.
Their mother was rescued from northern Ukraine, brought to Poland, passed through several different zoos and then ended up in the rescue centre, where she gave birth to her twins. They have now outgrown the rescue centre enclosure, and the hope is to integrate the two cubs with the existing bears, Mish and Lucy.

Information comes from the Wildwood Kent Facebook page.
Click to expand...

On May 27th, the zoo announced the arrival of Malenky and Nanuq, which are now on display in the Bear Field.

19K views · 294 reactions | Malenky & Nanuq Have Arrived at Wildwood Devon! We’re delighted to announce that our two brown bear cubs have safely arrived at their new forever... | By Wildwood Devon | Facebook
Wildwood Devon
 
Mish & Lucy (brown bears) both escaped their enclosure today. Apparently they headed straight for the food store and ate a week’s worth of honey! :p

All visitors were evacuated into secure buildings and the police attended, as per protocol. The bears were successfully returned to their enclosure within the hour.

Wildwood has emphasised that the integrity of the enclosure itself was not compromised, nor did the bears climb a tree to escape. They are currently investigating how the escaped happened.

If the enclosure itself isn’t compromised, does that mean maybe a door / gate was left opened? The park has said they will share more information as soon as they are able too.
 
Gelada said:
If the enclosure itself isn’t compromised, does that mean maybe a door / gate was left opened? .
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There can only be a limited number of reasons for an escape -
deficient enclosure design
deficient enclosure maintenance
human 'error'
human sabotage
I cant think of any others.
 
As there was a very convenient store with honey, someone
JoB198 said:
They could just be smarter than the average bear
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Then it would be a deficient enclosure design/construction/maintenance - as the law says clearly that the enclosure must restrain and contain the animals.
 
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Has there been no press comment on the escape of category 1A dangerous animals due to what must have been human 'error' if the enclosure is fine, could it have been staged?
At very least they have been very successful at turning an incident which should have closed the zoo and provoked a special inspection, by turning into a 'cuddly teddies looking for honey' story.
Given the proximity of an open building with honey available, the success and speed of the 'return', plenty of photographs taken of the event and a lack of public comment or complaint, and the impending summer holidays - one wonders... Lots of people will now know about the place who'd never heard of it before. It would take 'ba*ls' in the days of social media, but has been done repeatedly in the past.
 
ZooNews2024 said:
Has there been no press comment on the escape of category 1A dangerous animals due to what must have been human 'error' if the enclosure is fine, could it have been staged?
At very least they have been very successful at turning an incident which should have closed the zoo and provoked a special inspection, by turning into a 'cuddly teddies looking for honey' story.
Given the proximity of an open building with honey available, the success and speed of the 'return', plenty of photographs taken of the event and a lack of public comment or complaint, and the impending summer holidays - one wonders... Lots of people will now know about the place who'd never heard of it before. It would take 'ba*ls' in the days of social media, but has been done repeatedly in the past.
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I don’t know much about the zoo but I think this kind of speculation is unhelpful. I’ve seen the incident on social media and people have been complaining. The zoo is launching an investigation into why it happened and to obviously prevent it from happening again. I doubt any sabotage is involved and error is more likely to be the scenario. It would be reckless to ‘stage’ an escape of such a dangerous animal. The police were in attendance and the zoo said that it closed during this time.
 
ZooNews2024 said:
At very least they have been very successful at turning an incident which should have closed the zoo and provoked a special inspection, by turning into a 'cuddly teddies looking for honey' story.
Given the proximity of an open building with honey available, the success and speed of the 'return', plenty of photographs taken of the event and a lack of public comment or complaint, and the impending summer holidays - one wonders... Lots of people will now know about the place who'd never heard of it before. It would take 'ba*ls' in the days of social media, but has been done repeatedly in the past.
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I too noticed how all the attention was focused on the 'honey' angle and mention of the actual reason for the escape, if already known, was largely buried by the avalanche of 'cute' publicity.
 
Pertinax said:
I too noticed how all the attention was focused on the 'honey' angle and mention of the actual reason for the escape, if already known, was largely buried by the avalanche of 'cute' publicity.
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It does now appear to have been admitted to be keeper error, and the 'escape' was into a service area, though there was no mention of whether this was bear-proof.
Sheepy12 said:
I don’t know much about the zoo but I think this kind of speculation is unhelpful. I’ve seen the incident on social media and people have been complaining. The zoo is launching an investigation into why it happened and to obviously prevent it from happening again. I doubt any sabotage is involved and error is more likely to be the scenario. It would be reckless to ‘stage’ an escape of such a dangerous animal. The police were in attendance and the zoo said that it closed during this time.
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You are quite right, except that some of us are old enough to have actually seen it done deliberately and just before a holiday too, reckless or not.
 
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