Zoo expelled from industry body

A zoo in North Somerset has been expelled from an industry body over its relationship with a circus.

The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) said Noah's Ark Zoo Farm kept dealings with the Great British Circus hidden from it.

BIAZA, which pledged to investigate last month, has now terminated the Wraxhall zoo's membership for bringing the association into disrepute.

An association statement read: "There has been a breakdown of trust."

The Great British Circus is the only UK circus which still uses tigers in its shows.

One of the Noah's Ark tigers is used on a Great British Circus promotional DVD and is seen performing tricks during a training session in the circus ring.

The circus insists none of the tigers at Noah's Ark Zoo Farm [NAZF] has actually taken part in performances.

BIAZA is a charity which represents and promotes the UK's and Ireland's zoo and aquariums.

Its statement reads: "The reasons for termination are due to a refusal to provide BIAZA with information when requested and entering into an arrangement with the Great British Circus, which contravenes the Animal Transaction Policy, despite having been warned of possible consequences.

"Council believes that the behaviour of NAZF has brought the association into disrepute and that there has been a breakdown of trust between BIAZA and NAZF, and this has unfortunately resulted in a parting of the ways."

Secret filming

In October BBC Inside Out West revealed the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS) had filmed

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Extinction's march

We lose another animal species every 20 minutes, but it's not too late to turn the tide

By Jeff Corwin


There is a holocaust happening. Right now. And it's not confined to one nation or even one region. It is a global crisis.

Species are going extinct en masse.

Every 20 minutes, we lose an animal species. If this rate continues, by century's end, 50 percent of all living species will be gone. It is a phenomenon known as the sixth extinction. The fifth extinction took place 65 million years ago, when a meteor smashed into the Earth, killing off the dinosaurs and many other species and opening the door for the rise of mammals. Currently, the sixth extinction is on track to dwarf the fifth.

What - or more correctly, who - is to blame this time? As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The causes of this mass die-off are many: overpopulation, loss of habitat, global warming, species exploitation (the black market for rare animal parts is the third-largest illegal trade in the world, outranked only by weapons and drugs). The list goes on, but it all points to us.

Over the last 15 years, in the course of producing television documentaries and writing about wildlife, I have traveled the globe, and I have witnessed the grim carnage firsthand. I've observed the same story playing out in different locales.

In South Africa, off the coast of Cape Horn, lives one of the most feared predators of all - the great white shark. Yet this awesome creature is powerless before the mindless killing spree that is decimating its species at the jaw-dropping rate of 100 million sharks a year. Many are captured so that their dorsal fins can be chopped off (for shark fin soup). Then, still alive, they are dropped back into the sea, where they die a slow and painful death.

Further east, in Indonesia, I witnessed the mass destruction of rain forests to make way for palm oil plantations. Indonesia is now the world's leading producer of palm oil - a product used in many packaged foods and cosmetic goods - and the victims are the Sumatran elephant and orangutan. These beautiful creatures are on the brink of extinction as their habitats go up in smoke, further warming our planet in the process.

One day, while swimming off the coast of Indonesia, I came across a river of refuse and raw sewage stretching for miles. These streams and islands of refuse now populate all our oceans; in the middle of the Pacific, there is an island of garbage the size of Texas. This floating pollution serves to choke off and kill sea turtles, driving them closer to extinction. At the same time, the coral reefs where sea turtles get their food supply are dying due to rising sea temperatures from global warming. To top it off, sea turtles are hunted and killed for their meat - considered a delicacy in many Asian countries. It is an ugly but altogether effective one-two-three punch for this unique species.

This is not just a race to save a handful of charismatic species - animals to which we attach human-inspired values or characteristics. Who wouldn't want to save the sea otter, polar bear, giant panda or gorilla? These striking mammals tug at our heartstrings and often our charitable purse strings. But our actions need to be just as swift and determined when it comes to the valley elderberry longhorn beetle or the uncuddly, pebbly-skinned Puerto Rican crested toad or the black-footed ferret, whose fate is inextricably intertwined with that of the prairie dog. Each species, no matter how big, small, friendly or vicious, plays an important and essential role in its ecosystem. And we're in a race to preserve as much of the animal kingdom as possible.

Meanwhile, around the planet there are massive die-offs of amphibians, the canaries in our global coal mine. When frogs and other amphibians, which have existed for hundreds of millions of years, start to vanish, it is a sign that our natural world is in a state of peril. Bat and bee populations are also being decimated. Without bees, there will be no pollination, and without pollination, the predator that is decimating these other species - humankind - will also be headed toward its own extinction. Yes, there is a certain irony there.

This was all brought home to me in an intimate way after a recent trip to Panama. My young daughter, Maya, asked if she could accompany me on my next trip there so that she could see one of her favorite animals - the Panamanian golden frog - in the jungle. Sadly, I had to tell her no. This small, beautiful frog, the national symbol of Panama, no longer exists in the wild. Only a few live in captivity.

Is there hope? Yes. Because in every place I visited to witness the sixth extinction unfold, I met brave and selfless conservationists, biologists and wildlife scientists working hard to save species.

In Panama, biologist Edgardo Griffith has set up an amphibian rescue center to protect and quarantine rare frogs (including the Panamanian golden frog) before they are all wiped out by the deadly fungus Chytrid, which is rapidly killing off frogs on a global scale. In Africa, zoologist Iain Douglas Hamilton is one of many seeking to stop the illegal trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn. In Namibia, zoologist Laurie Marker is making strides to save the cheetah before it goes the way of the saber tooth tiger (or ......

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Jeff Corwin is the author of "100 Heartbeats," a book about his experiences tracking the sixth extinction. This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

The great 'musang' stakeout

The aim: To observe the Toddy Cat's population size and habits
Ang Yiying, Straits Times 30 Nov 09;

MRS Janet Chaw thought her son had heard one too many bedtime stories when he started telling her about a creature he was seeing around their neighbourhood about four years ago.

It had the face of a possum, the ears of a cat, and the tail of a monkey.

'We thought he was joking,' said Mrs Chaw, a housewife in her 40s, 'until my husband saw it. Later, I saw it for myself.'

She spotted it one morning about two years ago when it was walking on the top of the wall separating her house and the vacant house next door. 'I was a bit scared. I thought it might harm us, but my son said it was the animal he had been seeing.'

Patting Wei Yang, now nine, on his back, she said: 'Mummy believes you now!'

Down the street from them, Dr Ooi Teik Huat, 62, has also seen it. He had put out traps for stray animals whose droppings he had noticed in his garden.

The traps caught something unexpected, two or three of them within a few months. He said, 'They were greyish and definitely not domestic but wild animals.'

What he and the Chaws saw was the musang, a species of civet believed to be the last, wild small carnivore left in Singapore.

Also known as the Singapore Toddy Cat or Asian Palm Civet, it averages 3.2kg, with a body length of 53cm and a tail almost as long as its body (48cm).

According to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), members of the public have turned over more than 20 musangs each year in the last couple of years.

Some 90 per cent have come from the Siglap and Opera Estate area, said an AVA spokesman.

And that is where a musang stakeout is currently being carried out, by a team from the Wildlife Reserves Singapore and the National University of Singapore's (NUS) department of biological sciences.

The main people working on the project, the animal management officer at the Night Safari, Mr Abdul Razak Jaffar, 29, and NUS department of biological sciences student Xu Weiting, 22, have been spending their free time and weekends at the estate. They also tap on a pool of volunteers made up of more than 10 Night Safari and Zoo staff and Ms Xu's course mates and friends.

For this month, the small group has been attempting to sight the creatures in the Siglap and Opera Estate area - sometimes all night - to determine their population size and habits.

So far, it has been unable to determine their number but the survey will go on at least until January.

Starting from last month, the group has been to the area at least nine times to note down where the fruit trees - a source of food for the musangs - were

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Tara the elephant dies at Toronto Zoo

An elephant at the Toronto Zoo died this morning after zoo staff found her lying down, unable to stand up.

Tara, the 41-year-old "matriarch" of the elephant herd, had not exhibited any recent health concerns, Eric Cole, supervisor of the zoo's African Savanna, said. She was found by animal care staff shortly before 8 a.m. Monday morning, who tried in vain to lift the 8,500-pound animal back onto her feet. They were unable to hoist her back up, and she died at 11 a.m.

Tara was out in public as recently as last weekend, Cole said, and appeared to be doing well. "She was in good form, chasing the others and being her usual bossy self," he said. "She wasn't lethargic; she was eating."

The zoo will conduct a post-mortem examination with the assistance of the Ontario Veterinary College to determine Tara's exact cause of death. According to the zoo, the average lifespan of an elephant is between 40 and 45 years.

Another elephant, Tessa, died at Toronto Zoo five months ago after being pushed over by another elephant. However, Cole ruled that out as a possibility in this case, saying Tara was alone in her pen at the time.

Tara has lived at Toronto Zoo since 1974, arriving from southern Africa shortly after the zoo opened, and as many as 50 million people have visited Tara since. According to Cole, she had been "the boss" of the elephant herd for the past four years since the death of Patsy, the herd's previous matriarch.

"If there was a disagreement between other elephants, she would break it up," Cole said. "She liked to be the one in control. She'd go over and just by getting close to whoever she was going to interact with, they'd run away. Sometimes...

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Bristol Zoo Gardens appeals for your memories

Bristol Zoo Gardens is this week launching a project to capture peoples’ memories of the Zoo from years gone by.

The appeal is being led by the Zoo’s learning department, ahead of the Zoo’s 175th anniversary in 2011. The aim is to create an oral history archive to preserve peoples’ memories of the Zoo for future generations.

Bristol Zoo is the fifth oldest Zoo in the world and first opened its doors to the public in 1836. Since then it has been home to thousands of animals of all shapes and sizes.

In the early days, the Zoo’s animal collection was boosted by gifts including a lioness from Queen Victoria, and the Maharajah of Mysore sent over Zebi – the largest Asian elephant in captivity, who has since made it into the Guinness Book of Animal Records.

The Zoo also found international fame in 1934 when Adam, the first chimpanzee to be conceived and born in captivity in Europe, was born. Many people have particularly fond memories of the Zoo’s more recent inhabitants, such as the Asian elephants, Rosie and Wendy.

Another well known character was Alfred the gorilla, who arrived at the Zoo in September 1930 and died in March 1948. Alfred was, at the time, the only gorilla in captivity in the country and was a very popular Bristol citizen. Now his body stands in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.

Simon Garrett, Head of Learning, said: “Bristol Zoo is such an integral part of the city’s past that we do not want to lose vital information and memories. There are already countless stories and events from the early days of the Zoo that have been lost for ever, and we want to preserve as much of the Zoo’s magic as possible for the future. Looking to the past is also a vital tool in determining how we can make the Zoo better for the future.

“Now we are trying to capture people’s memories and experiences to give future generations the chance to have a glimpse of Bristol Zoo from years gone by, and let everyone know how important the Zoo is for Bristolians past, present and future.”

The Zoo has set up a dedicated email address (history@bristolzoo.org.uk) where anyone can send in their memories, photos or any other archival material. Alternatively, you can write to the Zoo by post.


Don Packham worked at the Zoo for 50 years, first as a penguin keeper and later as head keeper from 1977 to 1998. He was at the Zoo when it opened the world’s first nocturnal house in 1953.


Now retired and living in Portishead, Don has plenty of colourful memories of his time at the Zoo. He said: “I started work in 1948, on the same day as the very first penguins arrived at the Zoo. One of my fondest memories is the hatching of the very first king penguin, as well as breeding the first okapi, which was of huge significance and a great achievement.

“Another lasting memory was when 35 rhesus monkeys escaped (in the 1960s?) after someone snuck into the Zoo one night and put a ladder up again the wall of their enclosure. It took me three weeks to recapture them from all over Clifton – we got them all back eventually though.”

Mr Packham added: “The biggest change I saw over the years was the reduction in the number of large mammals at the Zoo, after having been in charge of bears, elephants, giraffes, zebras and various primate species, a reflection of the ever-changing and improving standards of husbandry and animal welfare, and the Zoo’s subsequent move towards conservation.”

In more recent years, the Zoo has developed its educational and scientific roles, including the opening of a new Conservation Education Centre in 1999. Full-time education, science and research officers are now employed and great emphasis is placed on activities which help both to inform our visitors and conserve wildlife.

John Partridge is the current Senior Curator of Animals and has been at the Zoo for 35 years. He said: “The Zoo has seen a lot of changes over the years, particularly in creating new immersion-style animal exhibits and developing its educational and scientific roles, with greater emphasis on conserving wildlife in their natural habitats.”

He added: “I’ve had the pleasure of working with some the Zoo’s most well known and loved animals over the years, such as the gorillas Samson and Delilah who produced the first baby gorilla to be successfully reared in the UK and Wendy the elephant. I’ve also helped to plan and develop some big changes at the Zoo, such as the opening of the current nocturnal house – Twilight World – in 1996, and, in 1999, Seal and Penguin Coasts. Change never stops and I am currently involved in developing plans for the Zoo’s future.”

Bristol Zoo has also played a vital role in breeding numerous threatened species including gorillas, Asiatic lions, aye ayes and, in 1999, the UK’s first successful breeding of critically-endangered Livingstone's fruit bats. Zoo staff have also successfully bred and reintroduced two of the UK’s native species - the Barberry carpet moth and the water vole.

To email you memories about the Zoo, email history@bristolzoo.org.uk or write to Simon Garrett, the learning department, Bristol Zoo Gardens, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 3HA.



For information about Bristol Zoo Gardens, please visit the website at www.bristolzoo.org.uk

Zoos warn of mass extinctions from climate change

Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/albertoalerigi/

Zoos and aquariums are warning they will be the last place on Earth where people will still be able to see species ranging from polar bears to corals, unless global leaders manage to halt climate change.

Governments must set targets limiting levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to prevent a mass extinction of wildlife, according to a statement signed by more than 200 zoos.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums want governments to set a target of stabilising CO2 in the atmosphere at 350 parts per million (ppm) to prevent the gas causing temperature rises which will do irreversible damage to habitats such as coral reefs. CO2 levels currently stand at around 385ppm.

Paul Pearce-Kelly, senior curator at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), said: ''From seahorses to golden-headed lion tamarins, zoos and aquariums play a crucial role in breeding endangered species for reintroduction into the wild.

''However, the climate change threat to the natural world is so severe that we're rapidly losing suitable habitats for these species.''

WAZA president Dr Mark Penning said: ''The urgent protection of ecosystems, which act as natural carbon sinks, is vital if humanity is to avoid the fate of runaway climate change.

''Our only hope is that world leaders respond to this reality and take appropriate action.''

He added: ''Climate change is not just

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Reptile Moms Share Nests

Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charmsd/

Some species of reptiles nest communally; that is, females lay their eggs together in the same spot around the same time. Some? Maybe that should be “many,” says J. Sean Doody, an ecologist now at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Along with two colleagues, Doody performed an exhaustive literature review of the egg-laying habits of reptiles (and amphibians). It turned out that communal nesting had been reported in 345 reptile species—four times more than previously realized. (Even some dinosaurs may have laid eggs together, but Doody sensibly restricted his survey to living species.)

The numbers represent only a minority of known reptile species, but the egg-laying behaviors of many have yet to be observed. In certain families of Australian lizards, the team points out, communal nesters represent no more than 9 percent of all the species, but more than 73 percent of the species whose nesting habits are known.

Why a female reptile should lay eggs in another’s nest has been little studied. She would probably save the time and effort of searching for an appropriate site and digging a nest. And a larger, many-mom clutch

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