Dudley Zoological Gardens Tecton Carnivore Pits - History of Occupation

These enclosures held lions (left), polar bears (centre) and tigers (right) from opening day (1937) up to the early 1980s when the new lion enclosure was built - this seems to have coincided with the arrival of the bears and the transfer of the tigers from the right-hand to the left-hand enclosure. As mentioned elsewhere, the polar bears were transferred to Katowice in 1989.

When I started visiting Dudley regularly around 1997 there were Sumatran tigers in the left-hand pit and the Himalayan bears had access to both of the other enclosures. The spotted hyaenas were in the current bush dog enclosure and had been since the early 1980s - they must have been in the tiger enclosure temporarily when zoogiraffe photographed them there. Here's a few snippets from my notes over the years:

12.09.1999 - Bears no longer given access to the old polar bear enclosure (since previous visit on 13.06.1999) - plans to develop for red pandas. Sumatran tiger Filon returned from London.

25.06.2000 - Tiger cubs Rokan and Dumai born April 2000.

03.12.2000 - Only 2 bears seen (i.e. the male must have died some time since June).

03.06.2002 -Bears gone (since previous visit on 14.04.2002) - I had assumed that these were the two which went to Glasgow, but as johnstoni states that they were transferred in 1998, perhaps these two were euthanised. Pygmy goats were in the enclosure!

22.12.2002 - Former bear enclosure planned to be used for Sulawesi macaques - climbing frame under construction.

22.03.2003 - Macaques moved into enclosure. 3 tiger cubs born.

06.07.2003 - Porcupines moved to a fenced-off area of the macaque enclosure.

06.12.2003 - 0.2 bears returned from Glasgow (since previous visit on 12.10.2003) - mixed with macaques but porcupines removed (an area for the macaques only was separated with hot wire)

05.06.2005 - 3 tiger cubs born 20.05.2005.

30.09.2005 - Macaques removed from bear enclosure (since previous visit on 30.08.2005).


A few other thoughts...

I'm fairly certain that Dudley only ever had a single male white tiger - he was sent on loan from Bristol Zoo who joined forces with the local council to save Dudley when it faced closure in 1977/78 (they were effectively partners for the next decade). I remember seeing the white tiger in the left-hand enclosure in the mid-1980s.

The development of the old polar bear enclosure for red pandas was never realised; neither was a later plan to develop the enclosure for fishing cats.
 
Thanks, your notes are extremely interesting.

I would concur that when you noted the last two black bears were no longer present in 2002, these animals were not the Glasgow bears. Inca and Gretel - who did go to Glasgow - were appearing in press reports in 1998 as being aggressive to the other 3 bears at Dudley, and subsequently moved up to Glasgow in that year. I expect the two that disappeared in 2002 before Inca and Gretal returned in 2003 were actually the other two animals in the trio that remained in 1998, and that they either died in 2002 or were moved to another collection.

Its interesting that Dudley attempted a mixed exhibit with the Sulawesi macaques when the two Glasgow females returned.

I can see the idea for using the polar bear pit for fishing cats, based on how Glasgow created a habitat for ocelots out of their polar bear enclosure.

Of all your notes, what interests me the most is that the polar bear pit could apparently be accessed from the adjacent enclosures. Did it seem to you that the black bears had to access the polar bear pit via the indoor den system, ie do you remember an exit point from the main enclosure into the polar bear pit?
 
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I agree about the Glasgow bears - I had already tweaked my reply after re-reading your opening post.

I'm certain that there was no direct access between the outdoor enclosures. There is access from the top left corner of the current bear enclosure into the dens at the back of the old polar bear enclosure and I think the Himalayan bears were able to move between the enclosures via these dens. I'm not even 100% sure that the same animals could access both enclosures - maybe they were separated ahead of the move to Glasgow.

I forgot to mention earlier that some of Dudley's bears came from Muncaster in the mid to late 1980s (there was a general collection there before the World Owl Centre).

The bears bred twice at Dudley - 1.0 in 1987 and 2.0 in 1988 - so that doesn't account for the 1.4 animals there in 1998. My gut feeling is that that Muncaster didn't have this many bears and their animals were mixed with animals already at Dudley. It's possible that the two groups never fully integrated and this resulted in the later split.
 
johnstoni said:
I was unaware Dudley kept hyenas, and had assumed that Colchester held the last ones even back then.
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Dudley had two(a pair) of Spotted Hyaenas as far back as the 1960's. They lived then in one of two small paddocks not far from the Entrance, on the right hand side with the zoo wall as the back of the enclosure. Not sure if they bred them but I think its possible. Later they(or their offspring) must have moved to the Carnivore pits. I also believe it was Dudley's last Spotted Hyaenas that went to Colchester.
 
johnstoni said:
I can find no evidence so far of Brumas being outlived by a mate at the time of her death. Possibly Sam and Sally were replacements for Brumas.
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Brumas had a mate called 'Ulla' He definately outlived her as I remember a press item reporting her death and describing how her mate 'Ulla' was on show as usual.. I don't know how long 'Ulla' lived after Brumas died, or what happened to him. I think Ivy & Mischa, Brumas' parents, probably outlived her too.

Amos & Mosa may well have been a 'political' gift from Russia as was the case with previous Brown bears. If so ZSL just had to find the space and with Sam & Sally in place maybe didn't have room for two pairs again- hence their removal to Whipsnade at a (so far) undefined date.
 
Pertinax said:
I also believe it was Dudley's last Spotted Hyaenas that went to Colchester.
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I'm fairly sure that Colchester's hyaenas came from Belfast. The survivor of the Dudley pair was moved to a sort of off-show enclosure (there was a track down to it, but it certainly wasn't public-friendly) at the end of the path which runs alongside the chimp enclosure. One of my fondest memories of Dudley is getting very close (there was no stand-off, just a chain-link fence) to a very old but very friendly animal, the male I think. This would have been in the mid-1990s when maned wolves moved into the former hyaena enclosure.
 
Pertinax said:
Dudley had two(a pair) of Spotted Hyaenas as far back as the 1960's. They lived then in one of two small paddocks not far from the Entrance, on the right hand side with the zoo wall as the back of the enclosure. Not sure if they bred them but I think its possible. Later they(or their offspring) must have moved to the Carnivore pits. I also believe it was Dudley's last Spotted Hyaenas that went to Colchester.
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The 1.1 Spotted Hyenas at Colchester were there as far back as 1987. I saw them in the small cage south of/adjacent to the old chimp house. Along with the Jaguars, they were housed here temporarily after the 1987 hurricane damaged their enclosures. As some people on here remember seeing Hyenas at Dudley as late as 1993, they would either have been descendents of a Dudley breeding pair (did the Dudley animals ever breed?) or completely unrelated animals.
 
Pertinax said:
Brumas had a mate called 'Ulla' He definately outlived her as I remember a press item reporting her death and describing how her mate 'Ulla' was on show as usual.. I don't know how long 'Ulla' lived after Brumas died, or what happened to him. I think Ivy & Mischa, Brumas' parents, probably outlived her too.
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Everything I have so far read about Brumas states that the bear was a female, although popularised as a male at the time. ZSL states that Pipaluk was the first male polar bear cub born in the UK.
 
robmv said:
I'm certain that there was no direct access between the outdoor enclosures. There is access from the top left corner of the current bear enclosure into the dens at the back of the old polar bear enclosure and I think the Himalayan bears were able to move between the enclosures via these dens. I'm not even 100% sure that the same animals could access both enclosures - maybe they were separated ahead of the move to Glasgow.

The bears bred twice at Dudley - 1.0 in 1987 and 2.0 in 1988 - so that doesn't account for the 1.4 animals there in 1998. My gut feeling is that that Muncaster didn't have this many bears and their animals were mixed with animals already at Dudley. It's possible that the two groups never fully integrated and this resulted in the later split.
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I would agree that it was more likely that the polar bear pit was put into use to keep the two problem females separate from the other 3 after fighting broke out. I am interested in whether the animals could have been coaxed through a system of doors into the polar bear den area, or if they actually had no way of moving them other than darting them. If it is the former, I think the potential for this complex is far greater than if there is no possibility of linking up the enclosures. This, combined with the fact the back walls of the lion and tiger pits were added later and unlikely to be listed, gives the structure huge potential to expand and continue with bears or indeed tigers.

If it is the case that Muncaster animals joined an existing group, I wonder if any of the Dudley black bears originated from the closure of Loch Lochmond Bear Park, as did some of Glasgows animals at the time of opening their purpose-built exhibit.
 
johnstoni said:
Everything I have so far read about Brumas states that the bear was a female, although popularised as a male at the time. ZSL states that Pipaluk was the first male polar bear cub born in the UK.
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Read my post about Brumas again... I refer to 'her' throughout. Her mate 'Ulla' was the male. Brumas was initially presumed male, chiefly because the press started calling the cub 'he'- her true identity only became clear some time later.
 
Ah yes your post does make sense. Thank you for pointing that out, yr usually spot-on and indeed were in this case.
 
Listed building status = criminal injustice for animal management purposes. If some architect love to preserve take them down piece by piece and relocate them, pay for it from the architeture budget and let Dudley Zoo get on with building some more suitable animal friendly exhibits for this day and age. Exotic wildlife deserve the housing facilities they need, not what some archi .. architect expert or listed building freak wants to house in it! :mad:
 
The buildings were designed to work with the landscape they were set into.

I am now fairly sure that the Tecton Carnivore pits not only link up via doorways at the point of the indoor polar bear dens, but that the back walls of the 2 larger pits are not listed and replaced original metal fencing. There is absolutely no reason why the whole complex cannot form a combined exhibit for bears or a similar large carnivore with the polar bear pit forming a service enclosure. The complex was the most recently-restored Tecton building at the zoo (an English Heritage grant in 1989), and after the aged tiger and bear each pass away there is no reason why the zoo cannot extend their enclosures right up through the woods behind them. I think you can work with apparently uncompromising structures and that the aesthetic is not where the cruelty lay in their former incarnations, it was that the animals were confined to these structures with no respite from the immediate environment in which they were placed.
 
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