"The Highland" in Kolmården safari park. The safari park in Kolmården opened in 1972 with four enclosures for visitors to drive through; 1. "The Savannah", 2. "The Baboon Mountain", 3. "The Bear's and The Wolf's Forest and 4. The Valley of Lions. In 1976 it was extended with "The Scandinavian Forest", placed first on the route, before the savannah. The safari park was a huge success but the baboons caused trouble. They destroyed the cars and escaped so after a couple of years they were moved to other parks. "The Baboon Mountain" was renamed to "The Highland" and African wild dogs, llamas and Alpine ibexes moved in. The wild dogs lived in a separate enclosure in the enclosure and visitors had to watch then through a fence, as they were not allowed to drive into their enclosure.
In the 00's the safari park started to cause problems, it was too popular and it was a constant line of cars through the whole park. It could often take several hours to get in and several hours to get through. Another problem was that it "lived its own life", visitors had to leave the main zoo and take their car from the parking and then enter the safari park. This lead to chaos in the morning and late afternoon, while it was quite calm in the middle of the day. To solve the problem, this cable car was opened in 2011. It starts inside the zoo and goes out over the safari park in a circle, so you don't have to go the same way back again. It crosses itself several times. The cable car is 2638 m long and takes 29 minutes to ride. Recorded guiding is available in Swedish, English and Finnish.
The picture was taken in 2014, and since 2015, "The Highland" is not called that anymore. The llamas and wild dogs are gone and the wild dog enclosure is demolished and is now a part of the main enclosure. Unfortunately, "The Highland" has become some kind of "dump" where surplus animals are placed. The ibexes are still there and have got company from ostriches. These two species are constant inhabitans of the enclosure. Some species that have lived in the enclosure (all mixed together at the same time and with the "constant inhabitants") are: common eland, vicugna and yak. To combine animals from different habitats and continents in this way is completly agaist everything I stand for. As a biologist with special interest in education, I see it as a really bad way to educate people about animals when they just take some animals and put them together like they've done here. I think it's a shame to do like this, animals should live together with other species from the same habitat, not from other continents.
