Alice Springs Desert Park Alice Springs Desert Park

Jusinbuzz

Jusinbuzz

Member
I get the feeling like I'm raving about this place too much for being the one to start it's own thread lol but anyway I'm curious as to how many of you have visited the Desert Park and if so what are your oppinions on it?
 
Please elaborate. Unfamiliar with the NT fauna to really have an opinion. I know the widgety grubs, worrals, lots of brown snake (eek), Aboriginal myths and Uluru bit ... but regarding what is intrinsically NT fauna I am not. I hope you will get us out of that predicament pretty soonish! :D
 
When we visited Australia in May and June of 2007 my wife and I visited the Alice Springs Desert Park and were enormously impressed. The free audio guide was a wonderful addition to the exhibits, as by pressing a button that corresponded with a number on the walking trail there would be a massive amount of information given to us.

The park is split into three large areas: Desert Rivers Habitat, Sand Country Habitat, and Woodland Habitat. There are many different bird and reptile species that are native to the central Australian desert, and if I remember correctly only the emus and kangaroos were representative of large mammals.

The true highlight of the park is the nocturnal house, which is one of the best I've ever seen. The spacious walkway inside allows visitors a lot of room to move, and the beautiful exhibits were nothing short of brilliant. The overall presentation of the entire collection was simply wonderfully done, and I think that the Alice Springs Desert Park is a hidden jewel in the middle of Australia. Anyone who visits the center should make a mandatory stop there.

@Pertinax: we saw bilbies and sticknest rats last year.
 
MARK said:
Hope to get there some time, I have a big interest in the Desert skinks
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Ooh well then it might be worth checking out the reptile center while your up here because they have a bigger range of reptiles than the Desert Park, I haven't been there in a while though but I'm planning on going next week so I'll have a look if they have more skinks. As far as I know the Desert Park currently has around 7 species of skinks including the centralian blue tongue.

@Jelle we don’t have too many of the iconic Australian animals such as Koalas, platypuses, wombats and tassie devils for obvious reasons but we do have Red Kangaroos, Emus, Echidnas, brush tail possums, bettongs, wallibes and spotted quolls. We also have a large range of birds (wedge-tailed eagles, brown falcons, black breasted buzzards, Australian bustards and my personal favs rainbow bee-eaters and tawny frogmouths) and herps (Spencer’s burrowing frogs, death adders, thorny devils, shingle backs, bearded dragons ect). The Desert Park used to have numbats and golden bandicoots as well but I’m not sure what happened to them. Anyway I hope that answers your question unless you were asking for fauna of the entire NT and not just the ones at the DP because there’s a pretty long list…

@Pertinax like snowleopard said yep they’ve still got them and more have been brought in recently and have been kept in the holding unit for future plans.
 
Thanx Jusinbuzz,

This has been most helpful. I love the desert, so your neck of the woods would suit me fine! Iconoclastic mammals like echidnas, bettongs and quolls, wow!

Being a reptile man myself (with a friend I keep Uromastyx) I like the blue tongues, shinglebacks and thorny devils too. Wedge-tailed eagles also look quite impressive.

Is Uluru and around not also numbat, bilby and stick-nest rat country or am I mistaken here?

Is the Alice Springs Desert Parks also involved in in situ conservation or release projects? And what about your mysterious Reptile Park around Alice Springs ... please tell us more!
 
Hope I got what you meant here. All the species you've listed used to be found commonly in the deserts of the NT but are now considered endangered so it would be unlikely to come across one in the region of Uluru these days. From what I've read numbats have been spotted in the south-western region of the NT so compared to the other ones you'd have a better chance of seeing one in that area but only where there's pleanty of vegetation. Bilbies and stick-nest rats used to be very diverse but due to the introduction of feral animals and other issues, bilbies are now only found north of Alice Springs and in some regions of Queensland and stick-nest rats have become extinct off mainland Australia with the only known wild population being in the Frankland Islands.

Yep the Desert Park has been involved in many conservation programs for desert or used-to-be desert fauna. Currently as far as I know they are focusing on the conservation of bilbies, malas, central rock rats and slater's skink.

As for the Reptile Center it's pretty much the size of a house but they've upgraded it from last time I went there with the new fossil cave so it could be a lot bigger. They have all kinds of australian reptiles such as a Perentie (Australia's largest lizard), pythons, frilled-necked lizards and even a saltwater crocodile. Here's their website Alice Springs Reptile Centre - Australia

And here's the one for the Desert Park if anyone is interested Alice Springs Desert Park -
 
Does anybody has a list of the species currently kept in the Nocturnal House ?

I also need the opening date of the Nocturnal House-unfortuntely, the park itselfs does not give response on any request. Perfect Visitor Service ?
 
This is a list of vertebrates present in the nocturnal house in mid-2013. I visited again in late 2014, but don't recall many changes - can check photos from that trip later.

Thorny Devil
Spinifex Legless Lizard
Desert Skink
Panther Skink
Central Netted Dragon
Gidgee Skink
Bynoe’s Gecko
Desert Death Adder
Spinifex Hopping Mouse
Woma
Golden Bandicoot
Bilby
Mala
Bush Stone Curlew
Tawny Frogmouth
Kultarr
Northern Quoll
Brush-tailed Bettong
Greater Stick-nest Rat
Stimson’s Python
Spiny-tailed Gecko
Amy’s Knob-tailed Gecko
Plains Rat
Red-tailed Phascogale
Mulga Snake

There were some spiders and insects too.
 
Thank you both for this informations, Guys.

@Zooboy. Do you also know how many exhibts are in the Nocturnal House ? I'm a bit surprised they keep only small or medium sized species in it, altough they have very large exhibits for a Nocturnal House...

Any mixed exhibits ?
 
Bib Fortuna said:
Thank you both for this informations, Guys.

@Zooboy. Do you also know how many exhibts are in the Nocturnal House ? I'm a bit surprised they keep only small or medium sized species in it, altough they have very large exhibits for a Nocturnal House...

Any mixed exhibits ?
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I can go through my photos from that visit later and see how many exhibits, and which were mixed (several were).

They do have large exhibits for a nocturnal house, but these obviously do not mean large exhibits in general. There really aren't any other local species that would be large that could be kept in a nocturnal house, the only native large species around would be macropods and dingos (depending on your definition of native), both of which are kept in other parts of the Park (and Mala within the nocturnal house). What species were you thinking of?
 
Below is a list of species in the Nocturnal House on my last visit, note that the areas at the end are not nocturnal, but more like a typical reptile house. Mixed exhibits indicated where possible, but I didn't record this in detail at the time (I think some of the reptile exhibits in the nocturnal area were mixed), and might also not have exhibits in the correct order.

Nocturnal House Species List (Oct 2014)

Entry Area (Light):
Thorny Devil + Military Dragon
Spinifex Legless Lizard
Desert Skink
Cane Grass Dragon
Central Netted Dragon
Golden Orb Weaver Spider
Panther Skink

Night Area (Dark):
Sandplain Gecko
Spiny-tailed Gecko
Bynoe's Gecko
Hooded Scaly-foot
Woma
Spinifex Hopping Mouse
Kultarr
Western Quoll
Mala + Bush Stone Curlew
Bilby
Plains Rat
Greater Stick-nest Rat
Stimson's Python
Knob-tailed Gecko
Golden Bandicoot + Tawny Frogmouth
Red-tailed Phascogale

Exit Area (Light):
Curl Snake
Desert Rainbow Skink
Earless Dragon + Common Toad Hopper
Pygmy Mulga Monitor
Mulga Snake
 
Thank you Zooboy28 for this list-it helps a lot to me. Altough I've not bene to this place, I have the feeling this Nocturnal House is one of the only few in the world, what could be named a good one.
 
Bib Fortuna said:
Thank you Zooboy28 for this list-it helps a lot to me. Altough I've not bene to this place, I have the feeling this Nocturnal House is one of the only few in the world, what could be named a good one.
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Its definitely one of the best Nocturnal Houses I have seen in terms of exhibit size, although some enclosures are too small for their inhabitants.
 
The exhibit size is a main problem in Nocturnal Houses, especially in germany and Usa, because both countries still keep species in them, the yshouldn't be kept in a Nocturnal House, so no species bigger than a coendu is good to be kept in these houses. But in the Usa, they have no problems to keep aardvardks, clouded leopards, lynx, binturongs, tamanduas, carakal ,Manul,tamandua, wombat, beaver ! and tree kangaroo in Nocturnal Houses..unbelivable....goodd care for the animals ? Good Joke.

For what Species at Alice Springs do you think the exhibts are too small?
 
Bib Fortuna said:
The exhibit size is a main problem in Nocturnal Houses, especially in germany and Usa, because both countries still keep species in them, the yshouldn't be kept in a Nocturnal House, so no species bigger than a coendu is good to be kept in these houses. But in the Usa, they have no problems to keep aardvardks, clouded leopards, lynx, binturongs, tamanduas, carakal ,Manul,tamandua, wombat, beaver ! and tree kangaroo in Nocturnal Houses..unbelivable....goodd care for the animals ? Good Joke.

For what Species at Alice Springs do you think the exhibts are too small?
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I very much agree that nocturnal houses usually have size issues, and therefore only usually work for smaller species. Often the species kept in them would not only do better in an outdoor exhibit, but would be way more visible anyway, so keeping them in nocturnal houses serves very little purpose (except providing suitable temperatures and year-round viewing I suppose).

In Australia (and NZ) nocturnal houses almost exclusively house natives (Adelaide has a sloth in theirs, don't know of any others), and I think Mala would probably be the largest species in any nocturnal house in the region.

Generally I don't think birds (except kiwi) should be in nocturnal houses, so that's two species at Alice Springs. The Mala and Quoll I also think have exhibits that are too small, but I think suitable enclosures would need to be quite large and complex (rocks, vegetation) to be suitable which might make viewing impossible in most nocturnal houses (Quoll would fit nicely in Mala enclosure though). I also think the Mulga Snake and Woma exhibits were too small, although nothing worse than you'd find in any reptile house. The others were all fine I think.

One of the best nocturnal exhibits in Australia is the Bilby enclosure at Adelaide Zoo, which is a low-walled enclosure viewable from all sides, much like many outdoor enclosures for small mammals, but very unusual for a nocturnal house. Alice Springs has the space to do this well, and it would be novel for many visitors.
 
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