Tails From a Conservation Park

Binturong – bears, cats or both?   Hello and welcome to the third episode of my ‘ Conservation Park Tails’ blog! This episode will be centred around our pair of Binturongs, Bibsi and Thor, as well as highlighting some of the most important conservation work being performed around the world .   As always, I will start by introducing the pair of Binturongs we have at Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park. In the rather cheesy selfie below, you will find Bibsi , our female Binturong. At the time of writing, she is 12 years old, having been born on the 15 th August 2009. Bibsi ha d been on a rather interesting journey before arriving with us in July 2016, being born at ARTIS Amsterdam Royal Zoo in the Netherlands before moving to Zoo Heidelburg , Germany in 2010. As you can probably tell from the photo, Bibsi is a very friendly Binturong and has even been known to use the shoulders of zookeepers to get to food bowls – talk about no regard for personal space! In the right-hand imag

Hello again everyone!  Before I start my next blog about the wonderful group of ring-lailed lemurs we have at Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park (BWCP), I would like to take a second to thank anyone who has taken their time to read either of the two blog entries before this one. Your support is greatly appreciated, I hope you all enjoyed finding out about our Alaotran gentle lemurs and the work done behind the scenes to conserve their species.  Once again, I’ll start by introducing our group of ring-tails, before we delve into the conservation work being done around the world to help support the species. On the left of the first picture we have our female lemur - Matti. Matti was born here at Birmingham Wildlife Park on the 1st June 2014. She is a very friendly lemur, who will often jump onto your back or shoulder whilst you are taking out the food bowls for the group. With ring-tailed lemur’s being ruled by a matriarchal female, Matti is the leader of our group – something she occa

Hello and welcome to the first episode of our new 'Tails from a Conservation Park' blog. Using this blog, I’d like to give you a better insight into the lives of some of the animals I care for and also the struggles their species’ face in the wild. I thought it will be interesting to start off talking about our Critically Endangered Alaotran Gentle Lemurs, the dangers they face in the wild and conservation work being done to help them. Firstly, I think it’s only right that you meet our two Gentle Lemurs here at Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park (BWCP). The top picture below is of Zoma, our male Gentle Lemur, with Bozy, our female, in the picture below that. Zoma was born on the 20 th of July 2007, making him just over 14 years old now, which is relatively old for a gentle lemur. He came to us on the 18 th of March 2016 from Jersey Zoo as part of an exchange for our original male lemur. Interestingly, he is also a first-generation captive-bred lemur, meaning that his paren

Hello to everyone (or anyone) reading this. Welcome to my monthly blog recounting the stories of the animals at the conservation park I am currently based at; I hope you keep reading and find it interesting. Now as this is the first entry to the blog, it will unfortunately be a little bit of a narcissistic overview on myself, before we move onto the interesting animal stuff in later entries. Mo our Red Panda patiently waiting for a Grape So, I am currently a Biological Sciences student at the University of Liverpool with a passion for all  things conservation. With the aspirations of maybe one day being a zookeeper myself, I decided to take a year out of my studies to volunteer at a zoo to gain some valuable experience. I was lucky enough to secure a placement at Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park (BWCP) and so here I am volunteering from Monday to Friday each week. Please feel free to take a look at their website and Facebook page using the links on the blog home screen! Then in