Zoo News Digest 16th June 2018 (ZooNews 999)
Peter Dickinson
elvinhow@gmail.com
Dear Colleague,
Heading away to my adopted home for a week and time is a bit tight so thought I best get this out today. I hope you find the links of interest.
"good
zoos will not gain the credibility of their critics until they condemn the bad
zoos wherever they are." Peter Dickinson
Did you know that advertising your vacancy or product on ZooNews Digest can potentially reach 78,000 + people?
Lots of interest follows.
*********
Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 77,000 Followers on Facebook( and over 78,000 likes) and has a weekly reach often exceeding over 350,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 823 Zoos in 154+ countries? That the subscriber list for the mail out reads like a 'Zoos Who's Who?'
If you are a subscriber to the email version then you probably knew this already. You would also know that ZooNews Digest pre-dates any of the others. It was there before FaceBook. It was there shortly after the internet became popular and was a 'Blog' before the word had been invented. ZooNews Digest reaches zoo people.
I remain committed to the work of GOOD zoos,
********
*****
***
**
*
The 10 Biggest
Mistakes of Trainers
One of the worst
parts is working with people that think they know everything. You know that
I’ve been this way before and saw all the bad outcomes coming from it. It all
happened when I worked with Sea Lions for about 2-3 years. I felt like I was a
confident young man and this reflected to “I know it all” well… biggest mistake
in my career. Over the years I worked with a lot of different trainers one
better than the other. I’ve worked with trainers that had huge ego’s. The
hardest part is not just themselves but what kind of reflection this has to the
team. Very narrow minded unmotivational people, short term thinkers. They can
actually give you the feeling you don’t excist. Very hard to work with. Don’t
become this way. Luckily on an early stage I got put into place to get back on
track. In the training world being open minded and flexible in choices is a key
aspect in having success with your animals.
The Darwin
Initiative is helping to save the Andean bear
The Darwin
Initiative is a UK government scheme, operated by the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which works to support international
projects with the aim of upholding both biodiversity and the natural
environment. Since 1992, the scheme has supported over 1,000 projects in 159
countries, awarding £140m in total.
The Darwin
Initiative funds and supports projects which target several biodiversity
conventions, including:
Saving the ‘Asian
unicorn’: Wildlife experts gather for pioneering conference
Renowned
conservationists have gathered on the coast to discuss saving one of the
world’s critically endangered species.
Racine Zoo receives
'sensory inclusive' certification
The Racine Zoo
recently became the first Wisconsin zoo to receive certification as a
sensory-inclusive facility.
The designation was
created through a partnership with KultureCity, a nonprofit organization
recognized nationwide for using its resources to revolutionize and effect
change in the community for those with sensory needs.
This new initiative
aims to promote an accommodating and positive experience for Racine Zoo guests
with sensory issues.
Path to
certification
The certification
process included staff training by leading
After Relocation, an
Endangered Species Stops Avoiding Predator Scents
Attempts to save
animals from extinction often include relocating them to zoos or another
location safe from threats. But a study published in Biology Letters today
(June 6) suggests that this isolation could have unintended consequences. The
authors found that after just 13 generations, northern quolls (Dasyurus
hallucatus)—small, carnivorous marsupials native to Australia—sequestered on an
island without predators no longer avoid predators’ scents as do their
counterparts on the mainland that coexist with predators. This could make the
animals more susceptible to predation when they are reintroduced to habitats
with predators.
“This [paper] is
really important because one of the challenges in much of the world—and
especially in Australia—is trying to reintroduce species to places with . . .
predators. Many of these reintroductions or translocations fail,” says Dan
Blumstein, who studies the evolution of behavior at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and did not participate in the work. “What this shows
pretty convincingly is that the complete loss of all predators for relatively
few number of generations of captivity leads to the loss of predator
discrimination abilities.”
Northern quolls are
about the size of a s
WHY IS APE
TRAFFICKING NOT A HIGH PRIORITY FOR GOVERNMENTS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT?
When it comes to the
illegal wildlife trade, it appears that Ape trafficking falls under the radar
and is little known in comparison to the thriving global business in elephant
ivory, rhino horns, tiger bone wine, and other wildlife products.
What is most
alarming is that Ape smuggling involves trade in ‘LIVE’ animals! They are some of the most endangered,
intelligent and sensitive animals on earth. Although recent studies have found
there are more gorillas and chimpanzees than previously believed, their numbers
are still rapidly declining.
Secret trafficking
pipelines start from the lush forests of Central Africa and South East Asia,
and then travel through loosely policed ports in the developing world, ending
up in wealthy homes, circuses and unscrupulous zoos thousands of miles away. On
the way, the pipeline is lubricated by corrupt officials and run by
transnational crim
10th European Zoo
Nutrition Conference
Marwell Zoo
January 17-20, 2019
Do Conservation
Strategies Need to Be More Compassionate?
At a moment of best-selling animal intelligence books
and headlines about songbird language and grieving elephants, it’s easy to
forget that nonhuman minds were until recently considered — by most
serious-minded scientists, anyway — to be quite simple.
Well into this
millennium, animal consciousness was regularly dismissed as either nonexistent
or profoundly dissimilar to our own. Animals were considered “conscious in the
sense of being under stimulus control,” as the famed psychologist B.F. Skinner
opined so neatly in 1974, expressing a conventional wisdom that dated to the
zoological musings of Aristotle. The notion of animals as thinking, feeling
beings was relegated to the edges of serious discourse.
Those days are past,
buried by an avalanche of scientific findings and history-of-science critiques.
More people than ever worry about the welfare of farmed animals; pets are
practically citizens; and wild animals too are increasingly regarded as beings with
whom peopl
What’s Still
Threatening Coastal California Condors?
In recent years,
however, conservationists noticed a worrying trend: Condors living in coastal
environments, such as near Big Sur, California, had fewer successful egg
hatchings than condors living further inland.
“As many as 40
percent coastal-living California condor breeding pairs showed evidence of
eggshell thinning,” Dodder explained.
Researchers have
hypothesized that the coastal condors’ diet might partly explain why.
California condors
are scavengers that primarily subsist on carrion, the decaying flesh of dead
animals. For coastal condors, that means a large part of their diet is made up
of
Lack of skilled
staff blamed for animals’ deaths at Peshawar Zoo
The management on
Tuesday denied any negligence on its part in handling the animals at the
facility and blamed the deaths at the Peshawar Zoo on the lack of skilled
staff.
A government
committee, which was constituted to investigate the deaths of dozens of animals
at the zoo and fix responsibility, has held the management of the facility
responsible for poor handling of the animals and failure to improve the habitat
for the animals and birds.
The report pointed
out lack of required and qualified staff, mishandling and mistreatment of
animals, harsh living conditions, chopping of trees and th
Dalian sea world
apologizes over video of trainer putting lipstick on beluga whale
A Chinese sea world
has apologized online after video went viral of one of its trainers putting
lipstick on the mouth of a beluga whale.
The 10-second clip
was uploaded recently to the popular short video platform Douyin, apparently by
one of the trainers at the Shengya Ocean World in the seaside city of Dalian.
In the clip, a female trainer laughs while painting the animal’s mouth red. The
post was captioned “very pretty!”
Five dead tiger cubs
found trafficked by car in central Vietnam
Vietnamese police
discovered the corpses of five tiger cubs upon inspecting the trunk of a car in
the central province of Nghe An on Tuesday afternoon.
The four-seater
car's occupants Bui Van Hieu, 26, and Hoang Van Thien, 27, said they were
transporting the tiger corpses to a local buyer who would have used them to
brew wine.
The dried cubs
weighed a total of over 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and would've been sold for
about VND70 million ($3,080), the men said.
Police have detained
Hieu and Thien, along with Nguyen Van Chinh, 33, who had been escorting the
haul along National Highway 7A in a different car. Investigation is continuing.
Tigers are facing
extinction in Vietnam, where the animals are trafficked for their meat,
decorative skin and claws. Th
“What the FUNK”
Secret Koala Cull Part-1
ase Study: What Not
To Do! What were you thinking, Victoria?
Cape Otway Region
Victoria: The koalas based along Victoria's Great Ocean Road are a popular
tourist attraction. Millions of people have continued to visit them each year
since their introduction by the Victorian Government in 1985. They have been
the object of numerous studies and increased interest over the years, as well
as a source of enjoyment for locals and tourists alike.
Animal charities to
open European circus elephant sanctuary
Animal rights groups
say they will establish Europe's first sanctuary for former circus elephants.
World Animal
Protection and Elephant Haven said Monday that the sanctuary will be created in
France and certain sites will be operational by this fall. The groups say the
project came about after lobbying by the Danish Parliament, which recently
announced its commitment to ban the use of wild animals in circuses.
They add that 14
other Euro
Belfast Zoo monkey
dies following escape
A monkey from
Belfast Zoo has died after being hit by a car.
The spider monkey,
which had escaped from the zoo on Saturday afternoon, was "clipped by a
car" on the M2 in north Belfast that evening.
Zoo keepers had been
tracking the monkey before the incident occurred. It was taken back to the zoo,
but died shortly afterwards.
Belfast City Council
said it was
Only Remaining Polar
Bear in S. Korea to Move to British Wildlife Park
The only remaining
polar bear in South Korea, which has been living in a zoo south of Seoul for
more than two decades, will move to a wildlife park in Britain later this year,
zoo officials said Monday.
The planned
relocation of the bear, named Tongki, from the Everland zoo to Britain’s
Yorkshire Wildlife Park came as the zoo has looked for ways to provide the aged
bear with a better living environment after other polar bears of the zoo died.
Animal activists
have also called for better living conditions for Tongki.
Everland zoo
officials said they reached agreement with the British zoo on Tongki’s
relocation in November.
Born in 1995 at a
zoo in the southeastern city of Masan, Tongki moved to the Everland zoo two
years later. Considering a bear’s life span is 25-30 years, the 24-year-old
Tongki is about 70-80 in human years. It has been living alone i
http://koreabizwire.com/only-remaining-polar-bear-in-s-korea-to-move-to-british-wildlife-park/119784
William Trently:
It’s time to move beyond aquariums, touch tanks and dissection
So there are
aquariums and touch tanks at science centers and entertainment venues
throughout the land. Many host educational activities for kids, such as fun
games or marine animal dissection.
Often I’ve
patronized restaurants that feature a huge fish tank decorating the reception
area. Lolita, the orca at the Miami Seaquarium, performed twice for me. My
formal education included the dissection of a shark, a cat, a human. I have
always loved educational science-oriented centers, and my children have enjoyed
the touch tanks and other exhibits.
Over the years,
however, I have come to frown on aquariums, touch tanks and traditional
dissection. I now see a tragic unfairness in the way animals are treated by
humans. I am not alone in that understanding; with the rise of social media and
more open communication worldwide, there are growing numbers of like-minded
individuals. A sampling of this way of thinking follows below.
With all the
stresses inflicted upon marine animals by human activity, why add to them
unnecessarily by harvesting squids for dissection when alternative methods are
available, such as virtual dissection? Why disrupt their ecosystem further if
we don’t need to? And why go through with what can often be a horrific journey
for these animals, stolen from their everyday normal lives into traps and
temporary stor
Batu Secret Zoo
welcomes Indian rhino Bertus
The Batu Secret Zoo
and conservation institution in East Java welcomed a new family member on May
18 -- a male Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) called Bertus.
The 10-year-old
rhino, which was born in Rotterdam Zoo in Holland, traveled almost 48 hours
from Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, his home for the last eight years, to Batu
Secret Zoo.
Bertus is the first
Indian rhino housed at an Indonesian zoo.
Veterinarian Irwanda
Kusuma Wardhana said his arrival meant that the zoo had gained the trust of the
European Association of Zoos and Aquaria.
"We started
negotiations [to bring Bertus to Indonesia] in 2015. The establishment of the
cage and exhibit started last year. The design was based on the European
standard of 7,500 square meters,” Irwanda added.
Bertus was transport
Management held
responsible for animals’ death in zoo
Terming the
situation prevailing at Peshawar Zoo “alarming”, an inquiry committee has held
the top management of the facility responsible for the death of animals.
Following the
reports of death of animals and birds in the zoo, the provincial government
constituted an inquiry committee headed by Kabir Afridi, the additional
secretary of higher education, which submitted its findings to the government a
few days ago.
“The vet officer,
his subordinates and admin officer were advised about the health, precautionary
measures and habitat development of the animals. Despite all this, the animals
are dying which is an alarming situation for the administration,” the committee
said in its concluding remarks to the inquiry report.
Killarney wildlife
park shuts 'because of red tape'
Too much red tape
and new regulations have forced a popular Killarney wildlife park and visitor
attraction to close after 25 years.
New Bristol Zoo
chief says taking role 'like coming home
THE NEW chief
executive of Bristol Zoological Society has said that taking on the role means
he is ‘coming home’.
Coming into the
role, Dr Justin Morris takes on the responsibility for Bristol Zoo Gardens and
the Wild Place Project in Easter Compton,
Dr Morris, who was
born in Whitchurch and lived in Bristol in his early years, has previously held
senior posts at the British Museum and at the Natural History Museum in London.
Most recently he has been director at the Somerleyton Estate in East Anglia,
which covers more than 5,000 acres.
No monkey business
for illegal farm
Officials on Friday
raided a monkey farm in Preah Vihear province over the facility’s lack of
permission to raise hundreds of monkeys in Preah Khlaing commune.
According to an
Environment Ministry report, the monkeys were kept by 35-year-old Mey Sengky,
who confined them without permission.
Roun Yet, chief of
Tbeng Meanchey district, said that the farm manager was previously notified but
did not heed the warning.
“We cooperated with
a working group composed of the provincial forestry administration and national
officials,” Mr Yet said. “We, along with the military police, had to ensure
security to seize th
Lyme Disease vaccine
set to become available soon, as first trials successfully passed
n an exciting
announcement, French drug manufacturer Valneva has announced that they’ve
successfully completed their first-ever human trial of a vaccine against the
disease. The vaccine, which is reportedly up to 96% effective, might soon be
available in the UK and US at a “reasonably low” price.
Does the US have a
pet tiger problem?
Taj was a
four-month-old tiger cub when purchased at a Texas truck stop by the driver of
an 18-wheeler lorry. But after Taj began tearing up the truck’s cab, the driver
contacted Austin Zoo to get the animals off his hands. The zoo now looks after
the fully grown 17-year-old Bengal tiger male.
Taj is one of as
many as 7,000 tigers living in the US either in zoos or privately owned,
according to some estimates. That’s nearly double the estimated 3,890 tigers
still prowling in the wild around the world.
Many of America’s
tigers could be in pe
Faecal transplants
could help preserve vulnerable species
New gut bacteria can
expand the diet of animals like koalas and rhinoceroses.
Koalas are among the
world’s fussiest eaters, consuming only the leaves of eucalyptus trees — and
just a few varieties of eucalyptus at that. Research now suggests that the
animals’ discriminating diet is determined in part by the bacteria that live in
their guts, which seem to restrict an individual koala’s ability to digest
certain species of eucalyptus.
The finding, which
was presented on 8 June at the annual meeting of the American Society for
Microbiology (ASM) in Atlanta, Georgia, comes amid a growing interest in how an
animal’s microbiome influences its ability to adapt to environmental change.
Researchers studying koalas and other vulnerable species are trying to find out
whether altering an animal’s gut bacteria through changes in diet — or even
faecal transplants — can increase its chance of survival.
That is an urgent
question for the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), whose habitat in Australia is
PETA Blames Florida
Zoo for Tiger Cub Deaths
A private Florida
zoo faced renewed accusations of animal abuse on Friday by the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals.
In a federal lawsuit
filed in Tampa, PETA claims Dade City’s Wild Things and its owners violated the
Endangered Species Act by allowing patrons to handle, pet and swim with tiger
cubs.
According to the
lawsuit, Dade City’s Wild Things staff forced cubs to interact with patrons by
forcibly grabbing the animals and not allowing them to escape. PETA also claims
the cubs are prematurely separated from their mothers and suffer under bad conditions.
PETA filed a similar
suit in October 2016. But during the protracted legal battle, owners Kathryn
Stearns and her son Randall shipped 19 tigers to Oklahoma days before a
court-ordered inspection. During the trip, one of those tigers ga
*********
Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 77,000 Followers on Facebook( and over 78,000 likes) and has a weekly reach often exceeding over 350,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 823 Zoos in 154+ countries? That the subscriber list for the mail out reads like a 'Zoos Who's Who?'
If you are a subscriber to the email version then you probably knew this already. You would also know that ZooNews Digest pre-dates any of the others. It was there before FaceBook. It was there shortly after the internet became popular and was a 'Blog' before the word had been invented. ZooNews Digest reaches zoo people.
I remain committed to the work of GOOD zoos,
********
*****
***
**
*
The 10 Biggest
Mistakes of Trainers
One of the worst
parts is working with people that think they know everything. You know that
I’ve been this way before and saw all the bad outcomes coming from it. It all
happened when I worked with Sea Lions for about 2-3 years. I felt like I was a
confident young man and this reflected to “I know it all” well… biggest mistake
in my career. Over the years I worked with a lot of different trainers one
better than the other. I’ve worked with trainers that had huge ego’s. The
hardest part is not just themselves but what kind of reflection this has to the
team. Very narrow minded unmotivational people, short term thinkers. They can
actually give you the feeling you don’t excist. Very hard to work with. Don’t
become this way. Luckily on an early stage I got put into place to get back on
track. In the training world being open minded and flexible in choices is a key
aspect in having success with your animals.
The Darwin
Initiative is helping to save the Andean bear
The Darwin
Initiative is a UK government scheme, operated by the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which works to support international
projects with the aim of upholding both biodiversity and the natural
environment. Since 1992, the scheme has supported over 1,000 projects in 159
countries, awarding £140m in total.
The Darwin
Initiative funds and supports projects which target several biodiversity
conventions, including:
Saving the ‘Asian
unicorn’: Wildlife experts gather for pioneering conference
Renowned
conservationists have gathered on the coast to discuss saving one of the
world’s critically endangered species.
Racine Zoo receives
'sensory inclusive' certification
The Racine Zoo
recently became the first Wisconsin zoo to receive certification as a
sensory-inclusive facility.
The designation was
created through a partnership with KultureCity, a nonprofit organization
recognized nationwide for using its resources to revolutionize and effect
change in the community for those with sensory needs.
This new initiative
aims to promote an accommodating and positive experience for Racine Zoo guests
with sensory issues.
Path to
certification
The certification
process included staff training by leading
After Relocation, an
Endangered Species Stops Avoiding Predator Scents
Attempts to save
animals from extinction often include relocating them to zoos or another
location safe from threats. But a study published in Biology Letters today
(June 6) suggests that this isolation could have unintended consequences. The
authors found that after just 13 generations, northern quolls (Dasyurus
hallucatus)—small, carnivorous marsupials native to Australia—sequestered on an
island without predators no longer avoid predators’ scents as do their
counterparts on the mainland that coexist with predators. This could make the
animals more susceptible to predation when they are reintroduced to habitats
with predators.
“This [paper] is
really important because one of the challenges in much of the world—and
especially in Australia—is trying to reintroduce species to places with . . .
predators. Many of these reintroductions or translocations fail,” says Dan
Blumstein, who studies the evolution of behavior at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and did not participate in the work. “What this shows
pretty convincingly is that the complete loss of all predators for relatively
few number of generations of captivity leads to the loss of predator
discrimination abilities.”
Northern quolls are
about the size of a s
WHY IS APE
TRAFFICKING NOT A HIGH PRIORITY FOR GOVERNMENTS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT?
When it comes to the
illegal wildlife trade, it appears that Ape trafficking falls under the radar
and is little known in comparison to the thriving global business in elephant
ivory, rhino horns, tiger bone wine, and other wildlife products.
What is most
alarming is that Ape smuggling involves trade in ‘LIVE’ animals! They are some of the most endangered,
intelligent and sensitive animals on earth. Although recent studies have found
there are more gorillas and chimpanzees than previously believed, their numbers
are still rapidly declining.
Secret trafficking
pipelines start from the lush forests of Central Africa and South East Asia,
and then travel through loosely policed ports in the developing world, ending
up in wealthy homes, circuses and unscrupulous zoos thousands of miles away. On
the way, the pipeline is lubricated by corrupt officials and run by
transnational crim
10th European Zoo
Nutrition Conference
Marwell Zoo
January 17-20, 2019
Do Conservation
Strategies Need to Be More Compassionate?
At a moment of best-selling animal intelligence books
and headlines about songbird language and grieving elephants, it’s easy to
forget that nonhuman minds were until recently considered — by most
serious-minded scientists, anyway — to be quite simple.
Well into this
millennium, animal consciousness was regularly dismissed as either nonexistent
or profoundly dissimilar to our own. Animals were considered “conscious in the
sense of being under stimulus control,” as the famed psychologist B.F. Skinner
opined so neatly in 1974, expressing a conventional wisdom that dated to the
zoological musings of Aristotle. The notion of animals as thinking, feeling
beings was relegated to the edges of serious discourse.
Those days are past,
buried by an avalanche of scientific findings and history-of-science critiques.
More people than ever worry about the welfare of farmed animals; pets are
practically citizens; and wild animals too are increasingly regarded as beings with
whom peopl
What’s Still
Threatening Coastal California Condors?
In recent years,
however, conservationists noticed a worrying trend: Condors living in coastal
environments, such as near Big Sur, California, had fewer successful egg
hatchings than condors living further inland.
“As many as 40
percent coastal-living California condor breeding pairs showed evidence of
eggshell thinning,” Dodder explained.
Researchers have
hypothesized that the coastal condors’ diet might partly explain why.
California condors
are scavengers that primarily subsist on carrion, the decaying flesh of dead
animals. For coastal condors, that means a large part of their diet is made up
of
Lack of skilled
staff blamed for animals’ deaths at Peshawar Zoo
The management on
Tuesday denied any negligence on its part in handling the animals at the
facility and blamed the deaths at the Peshawar Zoo on the lack of skilled
staff.
A government
committee, which was constituted to investigate the deaths of dozens of animals
at the zoo and fix responsibility, has held the management of the facility
responsible for poor handling of the animals and failure to improve the habitat
for the animals and birds.
The report pointed
out lack of required and qualified staff, mishandling and mistreatment of
animals, harsh living conditions, chopping of trees and th
Dalian sea world
apologizes over video of trainer putting lipstick on beluga whale
A Chinese sea world
has apologized online after video went viral of one of its trainers putting
lipstick on the mouth of a beluga whale.
The 10-second clip
was uploaded recently to the popular short video platform Douyin, apparently by
one of the trainers at the Shengya Ocean World in the seaside city of Dalian.
In the clip, a female trainer laughs while painting the animal’s mouth red. The
post was captioned “very pretty!”
Five dead tiger cubs
found trafficked by car in central Vietnam
Vietnamese police
discovered the corpses of five tiger cubs upon inspecting the trunk of a car in
the central province of Nghe An on Tuesday afternoon.
The four-seater
car's occupants Bui Van Hieu, 26, and Hoang Van Thien, 27, said they were
transporting the tiger corpses to a local buyer who would have used them to
brew wine.
The dried cubs
weighed a total of over 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and would've been sold for
about VND70 million ($3,080), the men said.
Police have detained
Hieu and Thien, along with Nguyen Van Chinh, 33, who had been escorting the
haul along National Highway 7A in a different car. Investigation is continuing.
Tigers are facing
extinction in Vietnam, where the animals are trafficked for their meat,
decorative skin and claws. Th
“What the FUNK”
Secret Koala Cull Part-1
ase Study: What Not
To Do! What were you thinking, Victoria?
Cape Otway Region
Victoria: The koalas based along Victoria's Great Ocean Road are a popular
tourist attraction. Millions of people have continued to visit them each year
since their introduction by the Victorian Government in 1985. They have been
the object of numerous studies and increased interest over the years, as well
as a source of enjoyment for locals and tourists alike.
Animal charities to
open European circus elephant sanctuary
Animal rights groups
say they will establish Europe's first sanctuary for former circus elephants.
World Animal
Protection and Elephant Haven said Monday that the sanctuary will be created in
France and certain sites will be operational by this fall. The groups say the
project came about after lobbying by the Danish Parliament, which recently
announced its commitment to ban the use of wild animals in circuses.
They add that 14
other Euro
Belfast Zoo monkey
dies following escape
A monkey from
Belfast Zoo has died after being hit by a car.
The spider monkey,
which had escaped from the zoo on Saturday afternoon, was "clipped by a
car" on the M2 in north Belfast that evening.
Zoo keepers had been
tracking the monkey before the incident occurred. It was taken back to the zoo,
but died shortly afterwards.
Belfast City Council
said it was
Only Remaining Polar
Bear in S. Korea to Move to British Wildlife Park
The only remaining
polar bear in South Korea, which has been living in a zoo south of Seoul for
more than two decades, will move to a wildlife park in Britain later this year,
zoo officials said Monday.
The planned
relocation of the bear, named Tongki, from the Everland zoo to Britain’s
Yorkshire Wildlife Park came as the zoo has looked for ways to provide the aged
bear with a better living environment after other polar bears of the zoo died.
Animal activists
have also called for better living conditions for Tongki.
Everland zoo
officials said they reached agreement with the British zoo on Tongki’s
relocation in November.
Born in 1995 at a
zoo in the southeastern city of Masan, Tongki moved to the Everland zoo two
years later. Considering a bear’s life span is 25-30 years, the 24-year-old
Tongki is about 70-80 in human years. It has been living alone i
http://koreabizwire.com/only-remaining-polar-bear-in-s-korea-to-move-to-british-wildlife-park/119784
William Trently:
It’s time to move beyond aquariums, touch tanks and dissection
So there are
aquariums and touch tanks at science centers and entertainment venues
throughout the land. Many host educational activities for kids, such as fun
games or marine animal dissection.
Often I’ve
patronized restaurants that feature a huge fish tank decorating the reception
area. Lolita, the orca at the Miami Seaquarium, performed twice for me. My
formal education included the dissection of a shark, a cat, a human. I have
always loved educational science-oriented centers, and my children have enjoyed
the touch tanks and other exhibits.
Over the years,
however, I have come to frown on aquariums, touch tanks and traditional
dissection. I now see a tragic unfairness in the way animals are treated by
humans. I am not alone in that understanding; with the rise of social media and
more open communication worldwide, there are growing numbers of like-minded
individuals. A sampling of this way of thinking follows below.
With all the
stresses inflicted upon marine animals by human activity, why add to them
unnecessarily by harvesting squids for dissection when alternative methods are
available, such as virtual dissection? Why disrupt their ecosystem further if
we don’t need to? And why go through with what can often be a horrific journey
for these animals, stolen from their everyday normal lives into traps and
temporary stor
Batu Secret Zoo
welcomes Indian rhino Bertus
The Batu Secret Zoo
and conservation institution in East Java welcomed a new family member on May
18 -- a male Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) called Bertus.
The 10-year-old
rhino, which was born in Rotterdam Zoo in Holland, traveled almost 48 hours
from Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, his home for the last eight years, to Batu
Secret Zoo.
Bertus is the first
Indian rhino housed at an Indonesian zoo.
Veterinarian Irwanda
Kusuma Wardhana said his arrival meant that the zoo had gained the trust of the
European Association of Zoos and Aquaria.
"We started
negotiations [to bring Bertus to Indonesia] in 2015. The establishment of the
cage and exhibit started last year. The design was based on the European
standard of 7,500 square meters,” Irwanda added.
Bertus was transport
Management held
responsible for animals’ death in zoo
Terming the
situation prevailing at Peshawar Zoo “alarming”, an inquiry committee has held
the top management of the facility responsible for the death of animals.
Following the
reports of death of animals and birds in the zoo, the provincial government
constituted an inquiry committee headed by Kabir Afridi, the additional
secretary of higher education, which submitted its findings to the government a
few days ago.
“The vet officer,
his subordinates and admin officer were advised about the health, precautionary
measures and habitat development of the animals. Despite all this, the animals
are dying which is an alarming situation for the administration,” the committee
said in its concluding remarks to the inquiry report.
Killarney wildlife
park shuts 'because of red tape'
Too much red tape
and new regulations have forced a popular Killarney wildlife park and visitor
attraction to close after 25 years.
New Bristol Zoo
chief says taking role 'like coming home
THE NEW chief
executive of Bristol Zoological Society has said that taking on the role means
he is ‘coming home’.
Coming into the
role, Dr Justin Morris takes on the responsibility for Bristol Zoo Gardens and
the Wild Place Project in Easter Compton,
Dr Morris, who was
born in Whitchurch and lived in Bristol in his early years, has previously held
senior posts at the British Museum and at the Natural History Museum in London.
Most recently he has been director at the Somerleyton Estate in East Anglia,
which covers more than 5,000 acres.
No monkey business
for illegal farm
Officials on Friday
raided a monkey farm in Preah Vihear province over the facility’s lack of
permission to raise hundreds of monkeys in Preah Khlaing commune.
According to an
Environment Ministry report, the monkeys were kept by 35-year-old Mey Sengky,
who confined them without permission.
Roun Yet, chief of
Tbeng Meanchey district, said that the farm manager was previously notified but
did not heed the warning.
“We cooperated with
a working group composed of the provincial forestry administration and national
officials,” Mr Yet said. “We, along with the military police, had to ensure
security to seize th
Lyme Disease vaccine
set to become available soon, as first trials successfully passed
n an exciting
announcement, French drug manufacturer Valneva has announced that they’ve
successfully completed their first-ever human trial of a vaccine against the
disease. The vaccine, which is reportedly up to 96% effective, might soon be
available in the UK and US at a “reasonably low” price.
Does the US have a
pet tiger problem?
Taj was a
four-month-old tiger cub when purchased at a Texas truck stop by the driver of
an 18-wheeler lorry. But after Taj began tearing up the truck’s cab, the driver
contacted Austin Zoo to get the animals off his hands. The zoo now looks after
the fully grown 17-year-old Bengal tiger male.
Taj is one of as
many as 7,000 tigers living in the US either in zoos or privately owned,
according to some estimates. That’s nearly double the estimated 3,890 tigers
still prowling in the wild around the world.
Many of America’s
tigers could be in pe
Faecal transplants
could help preserve vulnerable species
New gut bacteria can
expand the diet of animals like koalas and rhinoceroses.
Koalas are among the
world’s fussiest eaters, consuming only the leaves of eucalyptus trees — and
just a few varieties of eucalyptus at that. Research now suggests that the
animals’ discriminating diet is determined in part by the bacteria that live in
their guts, which seem to restrict an individual koala’s ability to digest
certain species of eucalyptus.
The finding, which
was presented on 8 June at the annual meeting of the American Society for
Microbiology (ASM) in Atlanta, Georgia, comes amid a growing interest in how an
animal’s microbiome influences its ability to adapt to environmental change.
Researchers studying koalas and other vulnerable species are trying to find out
whether altering an animal’s gut bacteria through changes in diet — or even
faecal transplants — can increase its chance of survival.
That is an urgent
question for the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), whose habitat in Australia is
PETA Blames Florida
Zoo for Tiger Cub Deaths
A private Florida
zoo faced renewed accusations of animal abuse on Friday by the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals.
In a federal lawsuit
filed in Tampa, PETA claims Dade City’s Wild Things and its owners violated the
Endangered Species Act by allowing patrons to handle, pet and swim with tiger
cubs.
According to the
lawsuit, Dade City’s Wild Things staff forced cubs to interact with patrons by
forcibly grabbing the animals and not allowing them to escape. PETA also claims
the cubs are prematurely separated from their mothers and suffer under bad conditions.
PETA filed a similar
suit in October 2016. But during the protracted legal battle, owners Kathryn
Stearns and her son Randall shipped 19 tigers to Oklahoma days before a
court-ordered inspection. During the trip, one of those tigers ga
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New Meetings and Conferences updated Here
If you have anything to add then please email me at elvinhow@gmail.com
I will include it when I get a minute. You know it makes sense.
Recent Zoo Vacancies
Vacancies in Zoos and Aquariums and Wildlife/Conservation facilities around the World
*****
About me
After more than 50 years working in private, commercial and National zoos in the capacity of keeper, head keeper and curator Peter Dickinson started to travel. He sold house and all his possessions and hit the road. He has traveled extensively in Turkey, Southern India and much of South East Asia before settling in Thailand. In his travels he has visited well over 200 zoos and many more before 'hitting the road' and writes about these in his blog http://zoonewsdigest.blogspot.com/
or on Hubpages http://hubpages.com/profile/Peter+Dickinson
Peter earns his living as an independent international zoo consultant, critic and writer. Currently working as Curator of Penguins in Ski Dubai. United Arab Emirates. He describes himself as an itinerant zoo keeper, one time zoo inspector, a dreamer, a traveler, an introvert, a people watcher, a lover, a thinker, a cosmopolitan, a writer, a hedonist, an explorer, a pantheist, a gastronome, sometime fool, a good friend to some and a pain in the butt to others.
"These are the best days of my life"
Peter Dickinson
Independent International Zoo Consultant
If you have anything to add then please email me at elvinhow@gmail.com
I will include it when I get a minute. You know it makes sense.
Recent Zoo Vacancies
Vacancies in Zoos and Aquariums and Wildlife/Conservation facilities around the World
*****
About me
After more than 50 years working in private, commercial and National zoos in the capacity of keeper, head keeper and curator Peter Dickinson started to travel. He sold house and all his possessions and hit the road. He has traveled extensively in Turkey, Southern India and much of South East Asia before settling in Thailand. In his travels he has visited well over 200 zoos and many more before 'hitting the road' and writes about these in his blog http://zoonewsdigest.blogspot.com/
or on Hubpages http://hubpages.com/profile/Peter+Dickinson
Peter earns his living as an independent international zoo consultant, critic and writer. Currently working as Curator of Penguins in Ski Dubai. United Arab Emirates. He describes himself as an itinerant zoo keeper, one time zoo inspector, a dreamer, a traveler, an introvert, a people watcher, a lover, a thinker, a cosmopolitan, a writer, a hedonist, an explorer, a pantheist, a gastronome, sometime fool, a good friend to some and a pain in the butt to others.
"These are the best days of my life"
Peter Dickinson
Independent International Zoo Consultant
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