Yorkshire Wildlife Park Yorkshire Wildlife Park now has Yellow Mongoose

LemurMan

LemurMan

Active Member
The Yorkshire Wildlife Park has had a new arrival in the shape of Yellow Mongoose. I'm not sure how many or where they are being kept, but you can see pictures here:

Yorkshire Wildlife Park | Facebook

By the looks of the wood in the back of the enclosure it looks the same as the Meerkats and Racoon Dogs enclosure.
 
I do champion the small and beautiful!

By the looks of it is shaping up into a nice zoo, but ..., but what I would like to see is a long term plan as to where the collection of YWP is going.
Any ideas??? :confused:
 
I think YWP intend to be a wildlife park with a difference, they seem to designing the enclosures to ensure maximum enrichment for the animals, but also so that the visitors can interact with the animals without just having to stare at them through a wire fence.

I know they have a massive passion for endangered species and are really wanting to be established within breeding programmes. They certainly do seem to have a good success rate with raising young. For example the meerkats, zebra, wallabies and lemurs have all had successful young, and all within 18 months of opening. I would say that is pretty impressive.

But I do agree with you, it would be nice to see even a poster, or even a page on their website, with what we can expect from YWP over the next year or longer.
 
LemurMan said:
I think YWP intend to be a wildlife park with a difference, they seem to designing the enclosures to ensure maximum enrichment for the animals, but also so that the visitors can interact with the animals without just having to stare at them through a wire fence.QUOTE]

I thought all zoos/wildlife parks want to be a park with a difference :p
(apologies if I sound skeptical my intention is just that YWP isn't really that different)
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LemurMan said:
For example the meerkats, zebra, wallabies and lemurs have all had successful young, and all within 18 months of opening. I would say that is pretty impressive.
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Not forgetting the lechwe, guanaco & ankole! I won't mention the goats & giant rabbits... oh look I have.
 
no disrespect to the park intended because well done on the breedings, but all those species are very easy to reproduce in a captive setting (hence the reason they are common in captive settings!) and a year and half is a long time-frame
 
foz said:
I thought all zoos/wildlife parks want to be a park with a difference :p
(apologies if I sound skeptical my intention is just that YWP isn't really that different)
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You're right of course but there does seem to have been one interesting policy decision at YWP - they seem determined to have no traditional cages in the on-exhibit area. That was the reason given by a member of staff for the removal from exhibit (and impending departure) of the Guayaquil Squirrels.
 
Chlidonias said:
no disrespect to the park intended because well done on the breedings, but all those species are very easy to reproduce in a captive setting (hence the reason they are common in captive settings!) and a year and half is a long time-frame
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Is it really? Is it that easy to put together a collection of rare and important breeding animals out of nowhere? They seem to spend quite a bit of time waiting for suitable animals to become available, then they don't, taking not-so-hot animals in the hope that prime breeding specimens might come along when they've had them for a while. Completely new enclosures have to be built with money that has to come from somewhere when a species does become available.

I'm not sure why is this in general discussion
 
OrangePerson said:
Is it really? Is it that easy to put together a collection of rare and important breeding animals out of nowhere? They seem to spend quite a bit of time waiting for suitable animals to become available, then they don't, taking not-so-hot animals in the hope that prime breeding specimens might come along when they've had them for a while. Completely new enclosures have to be built with money that has to come from somewhere when a species does become available.
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I wasn't attacking the park in any way, simply pointing out a fact. I'm not sure I entirely understand the point of your post in reply to mine, but I'll try to answer it:

"Is it really?" -- assuming you mean the year-and-a-half time frame being a long time, then yes it is when you're talking about the reproduction of easily-bred animal species.

"Is it that easy to put together a collection of rare and important breeding animals out of nowhere? " -- no it isn't easy to put together a collection of rare and important breeding animals, but you're not talking about rare and important breeding animals, you're talking about meerkats, wallabies etc - you even made a point of mentioning goats and giant rabbits!

"They seem to spend quite a bit of time waiting for suitable animals to become available, then they don't, taking not-so-hot animals in the hope that prime breeding specimens might come along when they've had them for a while. Completely new enclosures have to be built with money that has to come from somewhere when a species does become available." -- honestly this bit doesn't seem to match the context of your preceding two sentences, which is why I'm confused about the point you were trying to make in your post

:) :)
 
YWP has done extremely well in breeding what they have done so far, I mean OK the majority are relatively easy species to breed, I'll grant you that but what I was saying (and I think OrangePerson was too, correct me if I'm wrong) is that in the short space of time YWP has been open, that they're obviously doing something right.

I know from having worked at YWP for a brief period, that they design their enclosures so that the animals have the maximum space to roam around and maximum enrichment, but also they design them so that the visitors can get a really good view of the animals, rather than just seeing them stuck behind the conventional wire cage, which is more than can be said for some places in the UK.

These enclosures that YWP design do cost more than conventional enclosures, which is probably one of the reasons YWP hasn't got that much in the way of rare species just yet, or the fact that the species YWP wants are not available. But I do know that they have massive plans for the parks unused space behind the lemur enclosure and I wish them all the best.

It's pretty obvious therefore that YWP has obviously got their heads screwed on and (in my opinion) going to succeed extremely well when they eventually get some more rare species.

I think YWP is one to watch.
 
Chlidonias said:
I wasn't attacking the park in any way, simply pointing out a fact. I'm not sure I entirely understand the point of your post in reply to mine, but I'll try to answer it:

"Is it really?" -- assuming you mean the year-and-a-half time frame being a long time, then yes it is when you're talking about the reproduction of easily-bred animal species.

"Is it that easy to put together a collection of rare and important breeding animals out of nowhere? " -- no it isn't easy to put together a collection of rare and important breeding animals, but you're not talking about rare and important breeding animals, you're talking about meerkats, wallabies etc - you even made a point of mentioning goats and giant rabbits!

"They seem to spend quite a bit of time waiting for suitable animals to become available, then they don't, taking not-so-hot animals in the hope that prime breeding specimens might come along when they've had them for a while. Completely new enclosures have to be built with money that has to come from somewhere when a species does become available." -- honestly this bit doesn't seem to match the context of your preceding two sentences, which is why I'm confused about the point you were trying to make in your post
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I was suggesting that it's unfair to judge them on what they've achieved in breeding in 18 months without taking into consideration the difficulty of obtaining more difficult to breed or rarer animals or the cost of building suitable accommodation from scratch. You can't breed what you can't get. Even the best zoo can't hope to breed when the group of animals you manage to get has a vasectomised male!

In 2 years they've gone from being a farm with a motley assortment of animals some in very tiny cages to what it is today. Your criticism might be fair if they had gone into an established collection containing rare and difficult to breed animals and only succeeding in breeding a few common easy ones.

As to the rabbits - I should have remembered Zoochat is a place where any light-hearted comment can be taken down and used in evidence against you. ;)
 
OrangePerson said:
I was suggesting that it's unfair to judge them on what they've achieved in breeding in 18 months without taking into consideration the difficulty of obtaining more difficult to breed or rarer animals or the cost of building suitable accommodation from scratch.
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I'm actually hoping for big things from this collection. They have developed very rapidly since they first opened, and anyone knows that initially to attract visitors there has to be a sizeable collection of animals from the word go, or people will not come, or revisit (even places like Jersey and Marwell 'filled in' with common species in their early years). So I can understand why so far they have more of the commoner or typical wildlife park species making up the basis of the collection. The acquisition and 'saving' of the Romanian Lions was a threefold success;1. it gave the Lions a good home, 2. it gave the park a major draw, big carnivores, and 3. it generated a lot of good publicity for them and helped put them on the map. The large spacious enclosures they were able to complete quickly for them hopefully indicates that further major developments are possible in future.

I believe the owners/managers have come from a previous zoo/wildlife park background and as such are not novice owners taking on an established or rundown zoo or farm conversion, but without (necessarily) any zoological experience or direction other than to run the zoo and its animal collection successfully. The intention to specialise in endangered species here no doubt stems from that and so I do look forward to seeing future developments.
 
OrangePerson said:
I was suggesting that it's unfair to judge them on what they've achieved in breeding in 18 months without taking into consideration the difficulty of obtaining more difficult to breed or rarer animals or the cost of building suitable accommodation from scratch. You can't breed what you can't get. Even the best zoo can't hope to breed when the group of animals you manage to get has a vasectomised male!

In 2 years they've gone from being a farm with a motley assortment of animals some in very tiny cages to what it is today. Your criticism might be fair if they had gone into an established collection containing rare and difficult to breed animals and only succeeding in breeding a few common easy ones.
Click to expand...
once again, as I said, I wasn't attacking the park. I wasn't "unfairly judging" them, and indeed I don't even consider what I posted to be a criticism of the park, it was just a comment in response to an earlier comment about them having bred a list of particular species in a given time-frame. Nothing else.
 
For what they have done for those lions alone they deserve a medal also positive publicity for the U.K. zoo scene, not visited yet but hope to in the near future.
 
Visited today and the park was very busy indeed - which is great to see.

There are 5 yellow mongoose, who seem to be settling well, exploring their new surroundings, though one is a little shy about going outside too often.

I was delighted to see the 2 gorgeous old raccoon dogs in the new enclosure. This has fenced sides rather than solid wooden sides and both girls were really enjoying watching people go by.
 
Do you have any pictures that you could put up?

I didn't realise the racoon dogs had a new enclosure-where is this in the park and what's it like?
And are the yellow mongoose in the old racoon dogs enclosure?

Thanks in advance,
Will
 
hi will , i was along with mazfc and orange person today , super day as always at ywp , the mongoose are where the raccoon dogs were , its been altered a little bit for them , lots of variety , some sand , grass and tree bark chippings along with lots of old tree stumps and foliage the new arrivals were very settled and great to watch . the raccoon dogs are now right in the bottom corner of the original animal contact area ( now the outdoor picnic area ) its where the goats and sheep were sheltered and fed , its really lovely again with plenty of variety , and the 2 old girls seemed most content to be able to watch the world go by in the sunshine x
 
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