Golders Hill Park and Zoo Golder's Hill Park Zoo, London

johnstoni

johnstoni

Well-Known Member
We had an afternoon to kill and so headed up to see the collection at Golder's Hill Park, near Hampstead. I was expecting to see blackbuck, waders, cranes, egrets, seriamas etc, but almost all the enclosures had been emptied for 'refurbishment'. Either people have been bothering the stock or they actually are planning to refurbish, although the main flight was revamped only at the end of 2006....so I'm not sure what is going on there.

I think that a wealthy owner of a private collection has taken over the running of the aviaries and paddocks in this park, and so the stock is often rotated with his country collection. It is billed as 'London's only free zoo', although it is just a set of (very well-maintained) enclosures within the park itself. The only animals visible were a pair of Speckled Pigeons, two male greater rheas, 7 or 8 maras, and the small herd of fallow deer which were sharing their enclosure with a couple of....donkeys. I have a feeling the two rheas might have been two of the four males from the anteater paddock at ZSL.

Anyway, for those not familiar with this little place, I posted a couple of photos of the enclosures. If anyone has any news about the plans for this place, please share it as I imagine it is quite an interesting collection usually held there.


P5170002.JPG

http://www.zoobeat.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/11723/ppuser/610
Wader/ibis/stork flight aviary

P5170001.JPG

http://www.zoobeat.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/11722/ppuser/610
Rhea/mara enclosure. Has also held muntjac and alpaca at various points in time.

P5170004.JPG

http://www.zoobeat.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/11725/ppuser/610
Netted crane flight.

P5170003.JPG

http://www.zoobeat.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/11724/ppuser/610
Fallow deer paddock.
 
The person who was involved at Golders Park was Ben Potterton who is now working at Twycross Zoo,i believe he`s removed most of his stock from the park by the request of the council not sure where its been kept at the moment but the Greater Magellan Geese are going to Twycross.
 
nothing to with this but to do with zsl, why did they remove the male rheas from the anteater paddock at london, was there violence towards to anteaters?
 
The zoo originally acquired 4 adult male rheas. In about 2006, two of the rheas disappeared, leaving 2.0 still in with the anteaters at ZSL. I don't think there have ever been problems associated with that combination, even during the raising of offspring on the part of the anteaters.

CZ Jimmy - do you know if that means the experiment at Golder's Hill has now been wound down for good, or is the council wanting to maintain it themselves from now on?
 
I think you mean me zoogiraffe not sure have heard various stories will do some digging and try to get the facts of what has gone on.
 
johnstoni said:
The zoo originally acquired 4 adult male rheas. In about 2006, two of the rheas disappeared, leaving 2.0 still in with the anteaters at ZSL. I don't think there have ever been problems associated with that combination, even during the raising of offspring on the part of the anteaters.

CZ Jimmy - do you know if that means the experiment at Golder's Hill has now been wound down for good, or is the council wanting to maintain it themselves from now on?
Click to expand...

so the rheas are still in with the anteaters? i thought they had the paddock next to them?
 
they had the whole paddock last time I was there. Sounds like there may be a husbandry issue from what you are saying requiring them to be separated for some of the time. Maybe that's why the group was reduced to 2.0.

Yeah, sorry, Zoogiraffe, I meant you. Myself and Pertinax mentioned on the twycross thread that we had seen a tv piece on the Hampton Court Flower Show about Twycross where they were talking about a new direction in terms of lots of immersion planting, I am pretty sure the person on the segment was Ben Potterton, although I did not make the connection at that point.
He seems to be based at this nursery, where the nucleus of the animal collection is managed:

Shore Species

and they exhibit every year at the big Flower shows, hence the peice on Twycross as part of the coverage, with him having just been appointed as curator of plants there. It would seem that this collective who manage the animals at the nursery also run the Golder's hill site, which became a BIAZA member last year (a press release mentioned that ZSL and Paradise park were 'sponsoring' the enclosures), so either there is an upgrade being undertaken on the enclosures as a result of this, or his appointment at Twycross has meant less time to maintain a collection at the London park.
 
when you say whole paddock, you mean the anteater one and the one next to it?
 
Had a look at the link johnstoni to Bens place from when i spoke to him last at Golders Hill there seems to be a few species not listed on the web-site,suspect the Bar-headed Geese are also now at Twycross as a group has turned up in 1 of the empty chimp nursery enclosures their.
 
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zoogiraffe said:
Right now have an answer as to why alot of the exotics have left this place the council brought in a new manager for the park and he was not intrested in keeping anything which required a zoo license to keep it,as a result of this change Ben Potterton was as to remove his stock for the park.Below is the thread where questions where first asked about the park.

http://www.zoobeat.com/38/golders-hill-park-zoo-london-23520/#post67644
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Actually the reason that there are very few exotics at GH at the moment is that Ben Potterton decided to remove his animals under his own choice, as he quite rightly can.

While the numbers of animals are low, GH are re-fitting and repairing aviaries ready for a re-stock which is due in the new year.

GH are currently interviewing for a collections manager, no new parks manager has been employed.
 
Sorry, didnt mean to sound rude or abrupt!

Anyone who is interested in the post at GH can apply to the Corporation of London directly.

Once someone has been appointed I suspect there will be a much better idea of timescale for the return of livestock

Matt
 
Not a problem just means i will be less trusting of whats this person tells me again in the future,which is a pity because until now everything hes ever told be has been 100% true.
 
Golders Hill park is in the process of being restocked. So far 9 Little Egrets and some Laysan Teal have returned to the waterfowl aviary. A pair of Laughing Kookabura have been added to an aviary that just held Lady Amerherst's Pheasants. Best of all, the old peacock aviary has been redesigned and now has two Eurasian Eagle Owls. Logs have been added to another aviary which currently only holds speckled pigeon so hopefully something will be added soon. The Crane aviaries are still empty but the Mara and Rhea are still in the bottom paddock.
I do not know what other species are planned but I look forward to finding out.
 
I passed by today, the aviary with logs has coati according to the sign, rhea are in the old crane aviary and 2 donkeys are with the mara in the bottom paddock.
 
They must have moved the donkeys from the deer enclosure. The coatis are great news, i will go and have a look as soon as i can
 
The zoo featured in today's paper, the Ham & High. There is a nice picture of a coati and a pumpkin on the front page and a full page story inside. It mentions new arrivals as ' two new eagle owls, a flock of egrets, white faced whistling ducks and two Australian kookaburras' 'on the list to come are lemurs, goats, sheep and red-billed hornbills. It also mentions the deer, donkeys and Madagascan teal which are currently in the collection.

It mentions that they joined BIAZA and when considering the new collection they took into account the enclosures in place as well as conservational and educational aspects.

One interesting point is that they wanted to draw parallels with the wildlife of the (Hampstead) Heath and the park so kookaburras relate to kingfishers, eagle owls to native barn and tawny owls and egrets to herons. I think this is a great idea.

The animals came from other BIAZA zoos including ZSL London Zoo, Battersea and Colchester.

They do a range of educational events in the park and and an important aspect of the zoo is allowing people, especially children to get close to animals who wouldn't otherwise. Remember, London Zoo is a very expensive day out for a whole family!
 
Shirokuma said:
One interesting point is that they wanted to draw parallels with the wildlife of the (Hampstead) Heath and the park so kookaburras relate to kingfishers, eagle owls to native barn and tawny owls and egrets to herons. I think this is a great idea.

The fact that there are no barn owls on the heath and the fact that most animals in the collection have no relevance to heath wildlife (deer, maras, rheas etc..) means i question this idea.
Click to expand...
 
Are there no barn owls? I didn't know that.

Also, it wasn't said that every species in the collection should mirror local wildlife, just that there are some parallels. I think they should use interesting educational material to make this point though. As a free zoo with a mission to educate local people there should be much more information presented in an interesting and accessible way.

As the changes to the zoo are still in progress, there is still time for this to happen, I hope it will.
 
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