It's a 'suitable space' thing! The mountain chickens will be going back to Montserrat in the near future, and the choughs will likely be paired off into breeding pairs and moved to quiet, off-show enclosures at 'Shep's field' in the hope of successfully breeding and rearing this year... fingers, toes and everythiong else crossed!
It's just a batch, we still have the pairs in the herp house exhibit, as well as our bio-secured breeding centre behind the scenes. I can't see us going out of the species, as we're – if anything – hoping to make the collection more relevant to the field work we're carrying out.
If we can get permissions from their relevant home countries to do so, we may (but not definitely) yet house:
White-handed tamarins (Saguinus leucopus)
Pygmy hogs (Porcus salvania)
Iouanalao (pronounced Iyanola) – we're trying to establish it's taxonomic status at the moment as part of our Caribbean strategy.
Various Caribbean reptiles,
Serious variety of Anuran amphibians
and the choughs will likely be paired off into breeding pairs and moved to quiet, off-show enclosures at 'Shep's field' in the hope of successfully breeding and rearing this year... fingers, toes and everythiong else crossed!
It's just a batch, we still have the pairs in the herp house exhibit, as well as our bio-secured breeding centre behind the scenes. I can't see us going out of the species, as we're – if anything – hoping to make the collection more relevant to the field work we're carrying out.
If we can get permissions from their relevant home countries to do so, we may (but not definitely) yet house:
White-handed tamarins (Saguinus leucopus) Pygmy hogs (Porcus salvania)
Iouanalao (pronounced Iyanola) – we're trying to establish it's taxonomic status at the moment as part of our Caribbean strategy.
Various Caribbean reptiles,
Serious variety of Anuran amphibians
Well, speaking at last year's conservation symposium, Durrell's Dr Goutam Narayan, who heads up the pygmy hog programme said that he wants to get assurance colonies established in zoos, in case of stochastic events in the last wild stronghold. They have to be held in an Indian zoo for a while before we'll be able to apply for permits.
And briefly back to the original post with the photo of Sandy... ;-)
I have such lovely memories of her/him?? I was a young teen at the time who had a crush on the zoo keeper who was in the Orang house. He had put his jumper down in the cage between cages (can't remember what you call those double-door safety feature thingy). Sandy nicked his jumper and was running around taking the mick. Bali or Giles was coaxed/blackmailed by fruit and retrieved the clothing.
I know that might not sound like much but to me it was a really cute and funny memory.
Of course I have loads more memories and questions but I'll save them for relevant threads xx
