Highland Wildlife Park highland wildlife park

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Yes the highland wildlife park had a breeding group of saiga the last animal dying in the mid eighties, would love to see them back again.
 
I'd love them to get Saiga, as they are very unusual animals.

On the Planet earth DVD, it mentioned that they had filmed Millions of Saiga a few years ago, and now there were basically none!!
 
In "Planet Earth" they had to abandon the saiga antelope altogether and instead focus on other wildlife, such as the bactrian camel.
 
Saiga have made an astonishing come-back in the past so it ought to be easy to build a recovered population with a concerted effort.

HWP could also put chiru on its wishlist - now that would be something. None outside China/Tibet, I don't know if any Chinese zoos have them.

Edit: apparently they die if brought down to an altitude of less than 2000m, so maybe it's not such a good idea....
 
I suppose that both the bactrian camel and the mongolian gazelle were shot by the same film crew...battling the elements in a rugged area of Asia.
 
With the arrival of the tahr, urial, elk and kiang at the hwp does this bring an end to the blue tongue restrictions or as i think these animals came from Scandinavia which is exempt from these restrictions.
 
Pygathrix said:
Saiga have made an astonishing come-back in the past so it ought to be easy to build a recovered population with a concerted effort.

HWP could also put chiru on its wishlist - now that would be something. None outside China/Tibet, I don't know if any Chinese zoos have them.

Edit: apparently they die if brought down to an altitude of less than 2000m, so maybe it's not such a good idea....
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Saiga do go through enormous population fluctuations rather like lemmings- it seems a natural phenomenum them. So its quite possible they may experience another 'high' at some time in the future...

Chiru are fantastic, those horns...- there's a mounted one(or just a head) in the Tring Museum- sadly it seems we'll never see them in zoos from what you say...
 
What about pronghorns? They'd be suited to the climate. They are said to be tricky to keep in captivity but there are quite a few in American zoos now, although none elsewhere I think.
 
Pronghorn antelope would probably be outside of their geographical area, being a New World species. Also I think they are excessively nervous and probably wouldn't survive the journey. I don't know if they've ever been kept outside North America.
 
There was a zoo in Japan that had a pair for a long while i think it was in Yokohama.
 
Pertinax said:
Pronghorn antelope would probably be outside of their geographical area, being a New World species. Also I think they are excessively nervous and probably wouldn't survive the journey. I don't know if they've ever been kept outside North America.
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Suppose to be an old native American folklore that says they won`t breed outside certain areas of North America,don`t know how true this is but they`ve never been seen very often outside North America.
 
I think pronghorns need dry areas - Scotland is not the top place for that.

Wouldn't mind Highland getting cranes - red-crowned, siberian, white-naped, black-necked and hooded; spectacled and asian black bears, dhole, amur leopard...
 
Hannover f.e. was pretty successful in keeping and breeding pronghorns. However, this species, as it was already mentioned above, is tricky when it comes to husbandry; the few North American zoos like Topeka or Sedgwick county zoo also have their problems with them.

Saigas are equally difficult to keep, among others due to their very flighty behaviour. Their population collapse was a o-effect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the numbers of especially the Mongolian form have tremendously decreased in the last years due to poaching for TCM.
There might even be a relatively simple way for zoos to get saigas; a conservation center in Kazakhstan offered specimen to members of the ZGAP for zoos; so far, no zoo seemed to have been interested. One should not forget that for zoos, this species has the disadvantage of not being the optimal species for public display, both in terms of husbandry & visitor attraction.
 
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Sun Wukong said:
so far, no zoo seemed to have been interested. .
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Even Cologne? If so, they must be resigned to their saigas dying out, which is a pity, they will have the most experience of keeping them.

If I may disagree about the saiga as a visitor attraction. Sure, most visitors wouldn't know what one is, but you could feature them on a poster/ad campaign and they have the potential to be popular. The challenge of keeping them should not be off-putting, especially as the HWP has done so in the past.

Pertinax said:
Pronghorn antelope would probably be outside of their geographical area, being a New World species
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I can't see anything on the website about the animals being restricted to the palearctic. Just says European/mountain/tundra. I don't think it would be that much of a zoogeographical leap to the prairie...
 
Yes, even Cologne.
And about the popularity aspect, I knew, this would pop up...Yes, You could do more "advertisement", yes, they have "the potential" to be interesting for the public, yes the "challange of keeping them" shouldn't stand in the way of keeping them etc. etc.
But unfortunately, this is also true for dozens of other species, may it be Mountain tapirs, Kagus, Ratels, Snub-nosed monkeys, Proboscis monkeys, Goliath frogs, Aardwolves etc. etc... The bottom line is that many modern zoos, also due to international breeding programmes, rather focus on less and less species that are easier to get due to an already existing zoo population, as well as being easier to keep while having the same or similar effect on visitors, instead of (re)introducing more species to their zoos; the times of animal collections are almost over in many zoos. In the case of the saiga, that means that especially blackbucks are filling in their position as "zoo antelope"-and most visitors of Cologne Zoo surely won't notice that "that weird antelope-thingy" is missing and has been replaced.
 
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Yes I have heard this argument before. In the case of HWP, this is an institution with a limited remit and the saiga would be a good candidate for its collection, unlike the other animals you mentioned.
 
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