Why/when did london choose to get rid of its vast array of australian mammals (I'm especially interested in the echinda, wombat, tasmanian devil and the 1990's Koala)
Why/when did london choose to get rid of its vast array of australian mammals (I'm especially interested in the echinda, wombat, tasmanian devil and the 1990's Koala)
They didn't get rid of them on the whole, they simply died out and replacements weren't sought. The long-beaked echidnas were sent to Taronga. Supposedly "something" was going to be sent in exchange, but nearly 20 years on as far as I know nothing was. One koala died - its decline and demise is featured on "The Ark", I believe - and the remaining animal was sent to Lisbon.
The late Head Keeper of the Clore, Frank Wheeler, was a heavy duty marsupial and monotreme enthusiast, who had a host of contacts in Australia that might have got replacement stock in. But these leads weren't followed up.
Australia has horribly complex rules about the export of its native fauna - or so I've been led to believe. If any Aussies reading this would care to comment on whether or not a UK collection that really wanted to get (say) bilbies, quolls, tree kangaroos, wombats or echidnas would find it difficult, I'd be very interested.
London Zoo received a male long-beaked echidna from Dallas Zoo in 1986; there were already one male and two females in the collection, so London then had two males and two females.
I believe that, after the Dallas specimen joined the original London trio, the four London specimens were then the only ones outside Australasia.
