Definitely, and the same could be said for Salisbury too. It’s not just big guns San Diego and the Smithsonian pulling all the weight! Unless you want to get technical, in which case Smithsonian is responsible for every cub except one in the last decade, lol.
Yeah, after researching the population a bit, I realized that pretty much every cub born in the last couple years can be traced back to Smithsonian’s female Billie Jean.
Yup, all 5 of the ones born at queens in recent years go back to her as they were all born to Nicole who is a daughter of Billie Jean.
Chaska of Salisbury, the mother of Alba and Sinchi, is also Billie Jean’s daughter. And Chaska’s daughter Alba is the mother of SDZ’s cub Agapito. And to my knowledge, Nicole, Chaska, and Alba are the only females that have bred in the last 5 or so years within the population.
That’s not good though that they are the only ones breeding considering there offspring are the future of the population. None of Chaska, Alba, or Nicole’s Cubs can mate with each other because they are related right?
Yes, it’s not very good for the future of the population. The situation is very much like the North American polar bear population… however, Andeans have much more potential. For polar bears, imports outside of the country are not allowed and wild born bears aren’t allowed to breed. Thankfully this isn’t the case for Andeans, for example Pinocchio is wild born and is actively breeding with Chaska and Reid Park’s female Oja was imported from Europe. Let’s hope the Andean bear population doesn’t become as “restricted” as the polar population and new genes are brought in regularly. And to answer your question, you are correct none of the girls’ cubs will be bred to one another because like I said earlier all of them are related through Billie Jean. Alba and Brienne have already been paired with unrelated males and the male cubs may be exported to Europe or a female may be imported from there to breed with them.
And also a good thing is between chaska and Nicole it’s not like they have only been having males or only females it’s pretty 50/50 on the gender of the ones that have been born recently
Oja at Reid Park Zoo was imported Switzerland I believe in 2019. She and Jauqin are the only breeding pair not related to Billie Jean.
I’m glad that there are two yards, do you happen to know the size of the exhibit? It’ll be interesting to see if the zoo ends up housing a breeding pair or multiple individuals.
I might be wrong and in no way is this official but based off seeing the construction in person it looks like in total the 2 exhibits combined will be between 1-2 acres. I will try and find official size and if I do I will make sure to let you know.
Thank you so much! That’s certainly a nicely sized exhibit, I’d imagine that they won’t have any problem bringing in animals.
