Yorkshire Wildlife Park Lion Rescue (Yorkshire Wildlife Park)

thanks for link :)

lovely footage on both local news channels , nice that the keeper from Romania was able to come over and see the lions in their new home , hard to imagine the enclosure is bigger then the whole zoo where they came from
 
Did they know she was pregnant when she came to the park?
I'm assuming they have no plans to breed from them, especially with the problems mentioned in the article about the females previous cubs showing signs of being inbred.
 
They've never mentioned it, they have always said they would not be breeding from them. Johnny Junior had a vasectomy (he lives with multiple females) whilst the females who live with multiple males were both having implants (or whatever they do with lions, implants may have been my assumption). I guess she got pregnant before that happened.
 
The gestation period for a lion is between roughly 105 to 120 days. So mating roughly happened end of March beginning of April. The Lions arrived February 11th 2010 so mating definitely happened in Yorkshire wildlife park not Oradea zoo (Romania).
 
Someone, who was a little vague about it said she arrived pregnant and had one cub that died, she then had contraception that failed.
 
Just to bring the story up to date; the Lion Rescue project was one of two initiatives to win prizes for YWP at the 2010 BIAZA awards - quite an achievement for a zoo only in its second year!

Best marketing project
AWARD
Yorkshire Wildlife Park
Comparethemeerkatbabies.com
Yorkshire Wildlife Park opened on April 4th 2009 and as a new park, marketing budgets were very small! It was important to spread the word of the new park, especially during the critical school summer holiday period. When the meerkats had babies, the Park wanted to maximise the publicity but it would be 3 -4 weeks before the babies would make their appearance in the main enclosure and promoting new babies is a risky business. With no money for webcams etc, a campaign was launched and the meerkat babies had their own website set up ComparetheMeerkatBabies.com , shamelessly spoofing the popular TV ad campaign featuring meerkats, and promoting comparethemarket.com (comparethemeerkat.com). A daily blog told the tale of the youngsters from birth with photographs taken by the education officer. The campaign was promoted through facebook, on site and through a PR campaign that generated over £75,000 Advertising Value Equivalent. Daily hits averaged 10,000 and the You Tube video of the babies coming out for the first time became the third most watched video worldwide on bbc.co.uk. Visitors to the Park doubled and budget for August was exceeded by 25%. Even in May 2010, the comparethemeerkatbabies link still gets approximately 2000 hits a day via the yorkshirewildlifepark.com website.
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Best public relations project
AWARD
Yorkshire Wildlife Park
Lion rescue
In September 2009, Yorkshire Wildlife Park began a campaign to rescue 13 lions from poor conditions in Oradea Zoo, Romania. In partnership with the News of the World a campaign was launched to raise £150,000 towards the rescue and raise awareness of the campaign. Supporting PR was sent out to the national, regional and specialist press. Social networking sites were also used extensively as part of the communication programme.By October over £100,000 had been raised and the rescue was confirmed. The PR was complicated because of the messages – simple and hardhitting to maximise campaign results and then using further opportunities to tell the more complex messages inherent in a rescue of animals from another zoo in a country with very many problems in its zoo community.
A TV special was negotiated with Inside Out who filmed the progress of the rescue from the start. On the day of the arrival there was national and regional TV, radio and press lined up at Doncaster Airport to see the lions flown in courtesy of Jet 2.com The lions progress continued to be monitored by press around the country until they were released into their reserve in May 2010, when there was a significant TV, radio and press attendance. That evening the website had 149,000 unique hits and between 5 and 6 had more hits than the trainline.com. Over £1m advertising value equivalent was achieved from September 09 – May 2010 (source Durrants) which using the Institute of PR’s editorial value equivalent x3 equals £3m coverage. YWP is at the beginning of July performing 93% over budgeted footfall.
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The PR value of the Lion Rescue was always going to be strong (and very important for a new zoo), but those figures are incredibly impressive - 93% over their expected attendance is a lot of cash and a lot of potential return visits.




EDIT: Here's the link to the full award winners and commendations: http://www.biaza.org.uk/resources/library/images/awards 10 abstracts.pdf
 
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Maguari said:
The PR value of the Lion Rescue was always going to be strong
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Visited today and it was really busy, main car park was full by lunch time. The lions, OK... the staff, were celebrating 1 year since their arrival & apparently this was featured on the local news last night. They obviously got presents (wrapping paper in the enclosure) and were still playing with the remnants!

They look really well and even the wussiest lion Cezar seems to look pretty chilled these days and doesn't stick right by the house. All the youngsters have grown immensely and Ares (or Adel, no one is quite 100% sure) is very big and is getting a real mane now. Dani, the one with spinal stenosis, seems to have improved a lot and is playful and you don't always even notice.

They are a real talking point for visitors and people really have warmed to them.
 
The park's winter work is picking up pace now. Whilst the eland settle in on the plains of africa the guanaco have been moved on ( left on Dec 14th). Shame to see them go but the details put out recently said they weren't part of the long term plans for the park. Some work has started on their enclosure already for what will be the "south american village" - due to open in easter 2012. The leopard enclosure is well on the way to being completed too, again due to open for easter. Already looking forward to another exciting year for the park.
 
The Guanaco is one of my favourite species, but it seems to be fast disappearing from our collections. This is a situation I do not like, but to me the YWP is trendy in the extreme. For anyone in Yorkshire eager to see a Guanaco there is a mother and daughter duo in the cliff top paddock at Sewerby, Bridlington. Even the daughter is pretty ancient but they keep going on.
 
Parrotsandrew said:
but to me the YWP is trendy in the extreme.
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You're going to need to clarify that for me Andrew - I certainly wouldn't describe it as "Trendy" so maybe my definition of it is wildly different to yours?

I would describe it as - Young, ambitious, well designed and intelligent - a bit like myself obviously :p
 
Well karoocheetah as you know I'm not young and I now have a round figure age to prove it, not that I was trendy when I was young (far from it and I made a big effort not to be!). As far as the YWP is concerned I won't go on a diatribe about conservation as lots of people think it's what zoos should be about and of course it's a requirement of zoo licensing legislation, so I'll say just three things:-

1) When it first opened and before I had visited, a senior member of the Bartlett Society wrote to me about his visit. In conversation with someone there he had used the word "zoo". "We don't use that word here," was the reply.

2) It calls it's keepers "rangers", which I think is ludicrous.

3) It says it "rescued" its Lions. No it didn't - they were transferred from another zoo (after all the YWP is one) not plucked from the path of an oncoming locomotive or similar. Maybe their accommodation is a lot plusher but that doesn't mean they were rescued. Considering the advanced years of some of them someone must have given them good care in the past.

Ergo I consider the YWP to be trendy!!
 
OK, I'd say your first two points are a matter of personal semantics so it's what you believe and that's OK, I don't have strong opinions on whether they call themselves a Zoo, a wildlife park, a funland or a safari experience - it's what goes on inside that's important for me.

On the last point I really do disagree - looking at conditions that the lions came from then yes YWP most certainly did rescue them from a hellish existance and most definately a shorter life - that's a rescue in my book.
 
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I don't mind the YWP being called a wildlife park, but I think not liking the word "zoo" is pandering to the anti brigade.

As far as "rescue" or not is concerned, it depends on how one defines "rescue". It is not one to me, but I am not denying the Lions are in a nice exhibit and are probably better off than before (much as I'd love to see a traditional Lion house with wooden floored barred cages!).
 
Parrotsandrew said:
I am not denying the Lions are in a nice exhibit and are probably better off than before (much as I'd love to see a traditional Lion house with wooden floored barred cages!).
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There's no probably in it, it's the best lion enclosure in the UK.
 
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