Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust 2013 animal inventory

Thanks bongorob for this intresting information.
Quite strange that so many animals in the inventory are unsexed and even some very 'important' ones like the Ploughshare tortoises are of unknown seks ???
 
Lots of interesting births recorded - 50 mountain chicken frog , 31 Tonkin bug-eyed frog 17 Reunion chameleon , 1 Cuban iguana , 24 casque-headed iguana , 3 african pygmy goose , 6 Chilean flamingo , 7 blue-crowned laughing thrush , 3 Brazilian tanager . Figures for birds exclude juvenile deaths .
 
I hope they will put all the old inventories online. It is difficult to find out what is happening at Jersey.
 
It's striking reading this to see, starkly, just how small and - if isn't sacrilege to say it - how unexciting Jersey's mammal collection is. By my count, there are just 25 species, and that figure includes a full house of those species which can be seen at every zoo in the land: meerkat, ring-tailed lemur, Asian short-clawed otter, coati. Red river hog, lar gibbon, Sulawesi macaque - none of these is in any way unusual in the zoo world. To put it in context, Drusillas - a place rightly derided for being as interested in its Hello Kitty world as it is in its animal collection - has 40% of these mammal species within its collection.

Some nice reptiles, though. How many of these are on show?
 
sooty mangabey said:
It's striking reading this to see, starkly, just how small and - if isn't sacrilege to say it - how unexciting Jersey's mammal collection is. By my count, there are just 25 species, and that figure includes a full house of those species which can be seen at every zoo in the land: meerkat, ring-tailed lemur, Asian short-clawed otter, coati. Red river hog, lar gibbon, Sulawesi macaque - none of these is in any way unusual in the zoo world. To put it in context, Drusillas - a place rightly derided for being as interested in its Hello Kitty world as it is in its animal collection - has 40% of these mammal species within its collection.

Some nice reptiles, though. How many of these are on show?
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Well, both Lar Gibbon and Asian short-clawed Otter are species of conservation importance. One species is Endangered, and one Vulnerable. And gibbons are seldom as numerous in zoos as we imagine, since very few collections bother to keep more than a pair of any given taxon.

As for Sulawesi Crested Macaque: not only is it deemed to be Critically Endangered, there are only 19 zoos outside the UK, Republic of Ireland and Jersey that currently keep the species in Europe, according to zootiereliste.

That's not to say that I find the apparent trend towards ever decreasing species lists anything other than worrying. But some of those species - together with the Ring-tailed Lemur (Near Threatened, and the most eye-catching of Malagasy animals that are presently self-sustaining in captivity ) are fully entitled to a place at Jersey on their own merits.
 
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mazoo said:
All except the species unsuitable for display in current exhibit enclosures: Pyxis, Casarea, Gonglyomorphus, Nactus and A. yniphora.
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If we can raise enough funds, the next big project is the Herp house. Exciting plans for an indoor attraction in it's own right. We'll also be putting some thought in how we make it utterly unique, and not limited strictly to herps. For example, I've been pushing for us to get Birgus latro, as a lot of our Indian Ocean island work will hopefully be represented, and everyone who's been out there to visit the projects comes back raving about how incredible these crabs are, too!

I'll pass this on to our Head of Animal Collection. He has some plans in the pipeline which actually address many of the criticisms in this thread... but I can't say anything yet!:D
 
Rick J said:
For example, I've been pushing for us to get Birgus latro, as a lot of our Indian Ocean island work will hopefully be represented, and everyone who's been out there to visit the projects comes back raving about how incredible these crabs are, too!
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they wouldn't exactly fit with an ethical conservation side of things if housed at the zoo though. I might be wrong but I doubt they can be bred very successfully in captivity given their breeding cycle (they live on land but shed the eggs into the ocean where the larvae become pelagic), so any on display are simply "there" for people to look at and nothing more.
 
Chlidonias said:
they wouldn't exactly fit with an ethical conservation side of things if housed at the zoo though. I might be wrong but I doubt they can be bred very successfully in captivity given their breeding cycle (they live on land but shed the eggs into the ocean where the larvae become pelagic), so any on display are simply "there" for people to look at and nothing more.
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Hi Chlidonias.:)

Whilst they are 'data deficient' according to IUCN, our own Carl Jones and Nik Cole have spent decades working on the islands, and say that their numbers are very much in decline. They'd be a great subject for someone's PhD, and possibly more important in the ecosystems that we are working hard to restore than anyone realises. We may not be able to breed them ex-situ, but we could potentially learn more about them at the same time as making the public more aware of the fate of such creatures... and feed all this back to someone working to conserve them in-situ.

Essentially, this is similar in principle to our Gongylomorphus sp. work, except that it was our own people in the field, and we did breed them here as an assurance measure. In-situ breeding was successful enough (so far) not to require our shipping any skinks back. At least if there were a devastating stochastic event, we have some that could be used to restore their numbers... and potentially save the food chain they are an essential part of.

Also, never say never... there may be a way we could breed them, down the line. They live for around 60 years in the wild, and methods are advancing all the time. Better to have some and thus a chance, than leave it until it's too late.

Still, you may be right! I am admittedly no expert, sadly!
 
Rick J said:
Hi Chlidonias.:)

They'd be a great subject for someone's PhD, and possibly more important in the ecosystems that we are working hard to restore than anyone realises.
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Sounds interesting, if you still need someone from 2015 onwards, I would gladly do that ;)
 
I for one would love to see Coconut Crabs at Jersey. The fact that, at present, it is almost impossible to breed them in captivity need not, and should not, be a bar. There are plenty of animals (gorillas, elephants and cheetahs, to name but three) that zoo managers once considered absolutely impossible to breed - but then a way was found. Zoos are becoming far too homogenized these days, particularly in Britain. Zoo directors are too cautious of taking on anything that isn't guaranteed to do well, or which can't be expected to breed straightaway. Zoos have got to be more ambitious, bolder, not so willing to go for the more obvious, but predictable, species. If zoo directors don't rise to the challenge, there will always be some animals that are forever labelled as "impossible to breed" or "bad doers".
 
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