I don’t think they were there at the beginning, but imagine the zoo wouldn’t have wanted them in recent years as a potentially invasive species…….there was a similar colony at Banham, which I think may have extended outside the grounds…..
ZSL Whipsnade Zoo ZSL Whipsnade Zoo News 2024
- Thread starter Rosie183
- Start date
A huge amount of deer fawns have been born in the last four months; 26 Fallow deer, eight Sika deer, two Barasingha, and 15 Pere Davids Deer. The zoo's free roaming Chinese Water Deer have also welcomed at least 50 fawns too.
Flurry of fawns born at Whipsnade Zoo | Whipsnade Zoo
Flurry of fawns born at Whipsnade Zoo | Whipsnade Zoo
Still there. The zoo posted a photo of some of this year's pups on its Instagram page last month: Banham Zoo on Instagram: "A mid-week pick me up from our prairie dog pups "
They have indeed managed to breach the fence of the encolosure which they share with Formosan Sika, and a few years ago I spent a very pleasant hour sitting on a bench near that enclosure with a Prairie Dog grazing by my feet.
I last visited May 2023, and don’t remember seeing Prairie Dogs or Sika……must check ZTL to see if they’re still there….
Last edited by a moderator:
The Prairie Dogs are also still shown on the current edition of the zoo map. Somebody may have been tinkering with ZTL.
Does Woburn Deer Park still hold Axis? The British Deer Society website indicates that it does, but then it also lists the Jedforest Deer Park and IIRC that closed in 2016.
Where to see Deer - The British Deer Society
Where to see Deer - The British Deer Society
Sounds great, does anyone know the rough size of the deer herds at Whipsnade?
January 2024 stocklist here: https://cms.whipsnadezoo.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/Whipsnade stocklist 2024.pdf
I can remember when the area near/outside the Bison paddock was covered in Prairie dog mounds also, as they spread out on the adjacent downland.
Not knocking this unduly and I know its publicity-speak but it isn't really that 'incredible' as nearly all deer species' calves and fawns are born within a very short birth season in late spring/early summer. I'm a bit concerned at only 2 Barasingha, I'd hope for a few more. 15 is certainly a good total for the Pere David, but with 30 females as per the inventory, that's about right as a proportion of them will still last year's calves, so too young to breed. While put in perspective, up the road at Woburn they have probably 'welcomed' (as everywhere seems to say nowadays) something like 100+ PereDavid calves, due to the huge size of their herd.
Last edited:
I think all of Whipsnade's deer(and other ungulate) herds have been very inbred and with little or no unrelated blood being added over many decades.
Your comments about the Nilgai lead me to suspect that both they and more recently the Barasingha and Hog deer which are now in the paddock between Cheetahs and Asian plains entrance, are being used to fill otherwise empty paddocks. More preferable instead would be additional species. If they had wanted to have a mixed Nilgai/Blackbuck exhibit then why not focus on getting a male blackbuck to start breeding again...? They seemed to just forget about them instead.
They seem able to do this anywhere they are kept. Robin Hill Country Park on the Isle of Wight had a similar free-living colony, like Whipsnade's, living on chalk downland. Gone now though I think.
Last edited:
I have a feeling they disbanded/got rid of the Sika deer at Banham and there is something else there now.
I'm racking my brains to think if I can remember Sambar at Whipsnade but I can't. I think maybe yes though. Perhaps Tim May can answer this.
I believe that it does but probably not many. Woburn's websites list 9 species(I think its nine) in the Deer Park and Axis is always included. But in all my visits to Woburn over many years specifically to see the deer, I have never seen Axis!
Last edited:
A few places in UK that kept Blackbuck previously, some of them a long time ago now;
London ZSL (sent to Whipsnade) Colchester, Marwell, Paignton, Cotswold WP, Chester (sent to Hoo Farm) Hoo Farm, Axe Valley WP.
Any records from other places I'd be interested to hear of.
Whipsnade's American Bison are an interesting story. When the original herd died out (was it around the 1990's time?) there was a circa six year hiatus when they had none. But during that period local residents complained about their disappearance as the paddock is a landmark known locally as 'Bison Hill'. So a pair were brought back- with the usual attendant Zoo publicity. So now the paddock is empty again, don't they want them back again this time around?
When I first visited in the mid-80s the colony at Chester was in pretty well every paddock in West Zoo. By the mid-90s they were down to a couple of animals which were subsequently moved into what is now the Dwarf Mongoose enclosure and was then called 'Marmot Mania!' complete with exclamation mark.
Gordon MacGregor-Reid was a great and innovative boss of Chester but he didn't half like silly exhibit names.
Surely the reason why it's a SSSI in the first place is that it has been lightly grazed by Bison and Prairie Dogs for decades, and without those grazers it will in fairly short order revert to scrubland?