De Evenaar - Etten-Leur Eekhoorn Experience

vogelcommando

vogelcommando

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
Uploaded the first photos in the De Evenaar - Eekhoorn Experience Gallery because I visited this small collection for the first time today.
The Eekhoorn Experience ( = Squirrel Experience )is part of garden-center De Evenaar in Etten-Leur. In a nicely decorated bamboo-gardenof about 1 hectare about a dozen enclosures are places and the collection contains mainly squirrels ( 11 different species at the moment ) but also some lovebirds, parakeets, conures and pheasants ( most of them mutations ) have found a good home here.
Entrance is free but you have to go through the garden-center to reach the enctrance of the Experience but of course you are not forced to buy anything in the center.
I had been once before at the garden-center earlier this year but during the winter-time the Eekhoorn Experience is closed for visitors so today was my first visit.
As said, 11 squirrel-species are kept, among them some ( very ) rarely seen species :
- Sciurotamias davidianus
- Sciurus lis
- Sciurus granatensis ssp hoffmanni ( only kept at 2 other European collections )
- Tamias striatus ( kept at 18 European collections but the only onces in the Netherlands )
- Callosciurus finlaysonii ( unk. ssp ) ( one UK-collection has ssp ferrugineus )
- Callosciurus prevostii
- Tamiops swinhoe
- Dremomys pernyi ( not seen, were hidding in the nest-boxes :( - only 1 other European collection keeping it )
-Tamasciurus hudsonicus
- Cynomys ludovicianus
- Urocitellus richardsonii - only 4 other European collections
The Eekhoorn Experience is a really nice place with a lot of information-signs about squirrels, a very nice collection, good enclosures and for every squirrel-lover a must to visit, for the "normal" zoo / animal-lover a recommendation !
 
that's a really nice collection of squirrels! But you only have photos of one species in the gallery. Were the other squirrels not being cooperative?
 
Chlidonias said:
that's a really nice collection of squirrels! But you only have photos of one species in the gallery. Were the other squirrels not being cooperative?
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Oh yes, they were but I had only little time yesterday-evening. Will surtainly upload photos of the other ones later.
 
Something I forgot to tell in my little review of this place is that there are a number of automates where you cab buy special squirrel-food to feed the squirrels. Result is, that most squirrels are extremely tame and come direct to the wire when you comes near the enclosure - which make taking photos not always easy.
 
I visited De Evenaar this afternoon and there are some changes in the collection compared to my visit last year. Common rock squirrel seems to be gone. New are two subspecies of variegated squirrel: atrirufus (saw two in an indoor enclosure and two in the former common rock squirrel enclosure) and rigidus (saw a very nervous one).

The eastern chipmunks have moved indoor and their former enclosure serves as a second one for Hoffmann's red-tailed squirrels.
 
The black-and-white variegated squirrel was signed as rigidus, but it's a dorsalis. Maybe De Evenaar used Wainwright's "Mammals of Costa Rica", which proved to be wrong based on my encounters with both subspecies in the wild (in the drawing dorsalis is labelled as rigidus, and viceversa).
 
Hi, I am preparing for a trip around Holland and try to choose the route.
Zootierliste lists Japanese Squirrel, Black-Headed Parrot / Black-Capped Caique, Eastern Chipmunk, Finlayson's Squirrel and Perny's Long-Nosed Squirrel at Etten-Leur (de Eekhoorn Experience In De Evenaar). Are they there and where and when can they be best seen?
 
Sad news from Eekhoorn Experience : almost the complete collection has been sold ( around 120 squirrels of 7 species and 2 subspecies ). The reason : the Netherlands have a new law in which a positive list of mammals-species is mentioned and on this list not a single squirrel-species is listed. This means that it's not allowed anymore to breed with these species. The owner of the Eekhoorn Experience didn't want to seperate all his squirrels into male and female groups ( to avoid breeding ) so with a lot of pain he decided to sell most of the animals to other collections - alone some male Swinhoe's striped and some male American red squirrels are still in the selling part of the collection - the Bamboo-garden with all the Squirrel-cages is now closed for the public :( !
At the beginning of September I was the last ZooChatter to visit the collection ( I guess I was also the first ZooChatter the collection in May 2017 ) Hopefully all Squirrels will find fine new homes in other countries were they are allowed to live a decent live and to breed !
 
vogelcommando said:
Sad news from Eekhoorn Experience : almost the complete collection has been sold ( around 120 squirrels of 7 species and 2 subspecies ). The reason : the Netherlands have a new law in which a positive list of mammals-species is mentioned and on this list not a single squirrel-species is listed. This means that it's not allowed anymore to breed with these species. The owner of the Eekhoorn Experience didn't want to seperate all his squirrels into male and female groups ( to avoid breeding ) so with a lot of pain he decided to sell most of the animals to other collections - alone some male Swinhoe's striped and some male American red squirrels are still in the selling part of the collection - the Bamboo-garden with all the Squirrel-cages is now closed for the public :( !
At the beginning of September I was the last ZooChatter to visit the collection ( I guess I was also the first ZooChatter the collection in May 2017 ) Hopefully all Squirrels will find fine new homes in other countries were they are allowed to live a decent live and to breed !
Click to expand...
This is indeed a sad development from a country which previously led the World in attention to detail and success with small, interesting and 'fiddly' species.
 
vogelcommando said:
Sad news from Eekhoorn Experience : almost the complete collection has been sold ( around 120 squirrels of 7 species and 2 subspecies ). The reason : the Netherlands have a new law in which a positive list of mammals-species is mentioned and on this list not a single squirrel-species is listed. This means that it's not allowed anymore to breed with these species. The owner of the Eekhoorn Experience didn't want to seperate all his squirrels into male and female groups ( to avoid breeding ) so with a lot of pain he decided to sell most of the animals to other collections - alone some male Swinhoe's striped and some male American red squirrels are still in the selling part of the collection - the Bamboo-garden with all the Squirrel-cages is now closed for the public :( !
At the beginning of September I was the last ZooChatter to visit the collection ( I guess I was also the first ZooChatter the collection in May 2017 ) Hopefully all Squirrels will find fine new homes in other countries were they are allowed to live a decent live and to breed !
Click to expand...
I hope whoever supported the positive list law is happy about this. While the exotic animal trade is no way perfect, I am scared of laws like this making the rest of the world similar to Turkey.
 
vogelcommando said:
Sad news from Eekhoorn Experience : almost the complete collection has been sold ( around 120 squirrels of 7 species and 2 subspecies ). The reason : the Netherlands have a new law in which a positive list of mammals-species is mentioned and on this list not a single squirrel-species is listed. This means that it's not allowed anymore to breed with these species. The owner of the Eekhoorn Experience didn't want to seperate all his squirrels into male and female groups ( to avoid breeding ) so with a lot of pain he decided to sell most of the animals to other collections - alone some male Swinhoe's striped and some male American red squirrels are still in the selling part of the collection - the Bamboo-garden with all the Squirrel-cages is now closed for the public :( !
At the beginning of September I was the last ZooChatter to visit the collection ( I guess I was also the first ZooChatter the collection in May 2017 ) Hopefully all Squirrels will find fine new homes in other countries were they are allowed to live a decent live and to breed !
Click to expand...

You and I visited this collection together on August 3rd, 2019 and it was a memorable experience to see so many squirrels at one location. I still recall the smell of those little beasts...haha! But in all seriousness, it's ridiculous that such a cool zoo has had to sell its collection due to the new laws and regulations. To have 120 squirrels of many species was probably unique in the world and to have this collection now scattered is very sad news.
 
Zootierliste says it still has North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) and Swinhoe's striped squirrels (Tamiops swinhoei).
It used to have black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), Finlayson's squirrels (Callosciurus finlaysoni, Bocourt's squirrels (C.f.i bocourti), Pegu red squirrels (C.f ferrugineus), Prevost's squirrels (C prevostii), common rock squirrels (Otospermophilus variegatus), Costa Rica variegated squirrels (Sciurus variegatoides dorsalis), San Jose variegated squirrels (S.v rigidus), red-flanked variegated squirrels (S.v atrirufus), Hoffmann's red-tailed squirrels (S. granatenis hoffmanni), Japanese squirrels (S lis), eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus), Pere David's rock squirrels (Sciurotamias davidianus), Perny's long-nosed squirrels (Dremomys pernyi) and Richardson's ground squirrels (Urocitellus richardsonii)
 
That is terrible news, it was a beautiful little place when I visited in 2019, so many cool species. When I visited again in May this year the collection seemed to have dwindled quite a lot but it was still a pleasant little zoo and will be sorely missed, Dutch zoo laws seem to be very harsh:(
 
pangolin12 said:
That is terrible news, it was a beautiful little place when I visited in 2019, so many cool species. When I visited again in May this year the collection seemed to have dwindled quite a lot but it was still a pleasant little zoo and will be sorely missed, Dutch zoo laws seem to be very harsh:(
Click to expand...

It's problem was that it wasn't a zoo. Because it has no zoo license it has to follow the absurd ban on most small mammals for private keepers. The alternative would have been applying for a zoo license.
 
The owner was always breaking the law as he was open all year around having visitors and having too many non-domestic animals on display. He was already under obligation to have a zoo license. Although a nice collection it is unfair to other small collections that he didn't comply (For a long time the same problem existed with Zonnegloed in Belgium). So I would say it is not the positive list that made him sell, but his own unwillingness to apply for the license.
 
Anybody knows why the owner did not apply for the zoo license? I suppose time and cost spent could be prohibitive for a small collection.

In any case, completely unnecessary and sad result of absurd bureaucratic laws.
 
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