Leopards & Jaguars

Leopards & Jaguars
02-01-2007

Hi Guys,

Tell me if i not right about this, are all leopard species in the main Australian zoos being phased out? and also the Jaguars going as well, if so whats the reason for it.

02-01-2007

Or are they being phased out mark

02-01-2007

I haven't heard anything to say that snow leopards are being phased out. I thought that they were staying, especially as a Melbourne keeper told me that Mel was going to be importing one or two.
Other types of leopards - yes are being phased out.
Jaguars - not if the keepers can help it.

02-01-2007

From the 2005 Carnivore TAG Action Plan:

"One of the aims of animal collection planning is to build larger, more robust populations. As a rough guide, for many of the carnivores held in Australasian zoos, populations of less than 20 (adult) animals are a short-term prospect only, relying on regular replenishment from stocks outside Australasia. Populations of 20-50 may be expected to persist over the short-medium term (> 20 years) though for longer term persistence they too would rely on being closely linked to overseas programs."

The region currently holds or plans to hold the following large cat species: lion, cheetah, puma, jaguar, Sumatran tiger, hybrid tiger, white tigers (show animals), African leopard, Persian leopard, snow leopard and clouded leopard. Excluding the hybrid tigers, and the white tigers, that would still mean that the region needs to have a minimum of 180 large felid spaces in order to manage this number of species for just the short-medium term, and our zoos have indicated that they do not wish to provide this amount of space to large cats.

Although discussions are ongoing, the current recommendation from the zoos themselves, is to concentrate therefore on lion, cheetah, Sumatran tiger and snow leopard and manage these effectively, with sustainable population sizes, and eventually phase out the other species (and not acquire additional large felid species). Collection plans are always changing, and are never finalised, and as such are reviewed by the zoos, on a yearly basis.

I'll try to find some more current plans for large cats in the next few days, if they exist.

02-01-2007

Thanks Zoopro, If we cant import birds or hoofstock why cant we have something we can import like Jaguars and leopards??. we will end up with empty zoos or maybe just roos.

02-01-2007

I guess because there are thousands of species in the region's zoos (granted there are many fish, inverts and other small critters), all fighting for extra space. Some of them will win, and some will loose. Maybe you need to try to convince one of the zoos to become a big cat specialist and hold loads of cat species. But if they don't hold enough individuals, they'll soon be inbred and die out, or need to continually be replaced with expensive overseas imports.

Just one of the problems of being a very small region in terms of decent zoos, I guess and everyone wants their favourite animals to be held in greater numbers. Sadly, we just can't have it all.

02-01-2007

We will end up as the poor cousins to the overseas zoos the way we are going, damm.

03-01-2007

snowies are the only definat leoprad species, thou crocodylus park is breeding the rare one, i am not sure, go to there website, all the animals of this sub-species are now here(3?)

03-01-2007

They have Persian Leopards

03-01-2007

Unfortunately Mark, that's the way it is With the limited resources (financial and people) that we have here, we'll never be able to compete with the big US zoos.

We can however, specialise in all of the wonderful native species that we have, many of which are endangered and in need of serious conservation work.

03-01-2007

I think their website is out of date. For the past two years, they have reported having only one animal, a female.

There's also a 14 year-old male at Adelaide, and a desexed 15 year-old female at Melbourne.

03-01-2007

o, i thought they all moved up there, but yea ya right hasnt been updated

03-01-2007

I looked at there site and it said they had two daughters and their father.

Hopefully they will swap him with an unrelated male.

Their site says their are 6 in Australia.

03-01-2007

Like I mentioned earlier, their site is out of date. They definitely only have one female.

03-01-2007

i was informed from someone from melbourne some time ago that the persian leopards in australia are of liniages that are well represented overseas. when our zoos decided to phase the species out some years ago (a bit of a backflip since i was told the program was developed only in the eighties) they offered the stock back to the european program but they were not required.