A small bit of news missed - A new male prehensile tailed porcupine arrived last week.
Lets hope that they're able to bring in a male - the studbook has been struggling of late with individuals passing, very few births, and not enough pairs being housed together. Shes only young, so that gives them some time to bring in a male.... fingers crossed
I visited here yesterday and can't recall it being mentioned previously that the neighbouring garden centre has closed and Hemsley have now taken over their land and a large grassed area. This probably will at least double the total area. They now have a decent cafe too (I assume the building used for the garden centre one).
The first species for the expansion area will be tapir, spider monkeys (species not known but the map shows brown) and Cheetah. They are hoping to have all this built by the summer.
In answer to the earlier questions, the skunk is in the old meerkat enclosure and the Australian walk through extension has not been finished yet.
Overall a successful visit, with only the aardwolf a no show. One highlight was the young rusty spotted cat which was much braver than its parents and spent at least 10 minutes staring at visitors at the front of the cage.
Hello!
If anyone does have any questions, please feel free to post them and we shall try our best to get back to you with any relevant specifics!
We are hoping to receive tapirs between Easter and the beginning of the summer holidays, and later in the year they will be joined by spider monkeys - sharing an exhibit. Tapir species will currently be Brazilian but we are working with a coalition of 5 other European zoos on bringing in new blood for Baird's tapirs to form the nucleus of new breeding animals. As with any imports, this is likely to take some time (potentially a few years) and involve a lot of pen pushing.
We are in talks regarding returning maned wolves to the collectio, and are hopeful this will be within the year, and are in the process of moving our civets and toucan(s) to new enclosures. We will also be re-housing our tayra in a new enclosure with overhead walkways near to the new tapir enclosure.
We did indeed take over the running of the whole site from June 2019. We were left with a lot of work to do to infrastructure and waste removal, but are finally beginning to see the end of it. It's a lot of work for our small team!
Does anyone have a complete list of species both on and off show at Hemsley because I'm not sure if the website shows everything e.g. is there an Aardwolf and is it onshow?
Ok thanks.It seems the aardwolf died in February, based on what a friend of mine who visited then was told.
I wouldn’t be able to give you a complete list; although @MagpieGoose visited recently so he might be able to assist with that.
Looks promising!Hemsley Conservation Centre's Facebook page is teasing the arrival of 'two big new species'. The image with the post shows a slide door for one of the enclosures.
Absolutely fantastic news!