
3PARADISE WILDLIFE PARK & THE BIG CAT SANCTUARY |
BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE
generation to become more involved in
environmental issues, we have recently
launched our HEART Project – HEART
standing for Helping Endangered
Animals by Recycling Trash – whereby
local schools produce an endangered
animal model made entirely of recycled
materials. This will then culminate
in an art exhibition at the park, and
funds raised will be donated to our
main conservation project for the year,
Drive4Wildlife.
Over recent years at Paradise, we have
been very proud to make valuable
contributions to the European
Endangered Species Programme by
breeding black lemurs, red-ruffed
lemurs, cotton-top tamarins and
red pandas. An achievement we are
very proud of is the birth of a female
jaguar cub, Keira, the only cub born in
the UK as part of the programme, in
2017. At present, we have breeding
recommendations for our red pandas
and our snow leopards and hope
to hear the patter of tiny paws in
thefuture.
Expanding with The Big Cat
Sanctuary
We have had further success at The Big
Cat Sanctuary, which is managed by
the Wildlife Heritage Foundation. Our
success in breeding big cats, including
tigers, lions, snow leopards and Pallas’s
cats, has led to us becoming involved
with some of the world’s most
endangered big catspecies.
With insufficient land to expand to
this end in Broxbourne, we decided
to look for an alternative facility. With
our substantial network of contacts and
expertise in the breeding of big cats, we
built a tremendous network of support
for the sanctuary within the global zoo
community, conservation organisations
and breeding programmes. This helped
us to develop The Big Cat Sanctuary
and launch our pivotal “collection plan”
– as a result, we are now home to
Europe’s most important collection of
endangered felines.
Our breeding successes at the
sanctuary include Amur leopards,
Amur tigers and Sumatran tigers, and
we have been recognised by WAZA
for the branding and promotion
of the Amur Leopard Conservation
Programme. In recent years, we
have opened our hugely successful
overnight-stay lodges, which has
enabled the sanctuary to grow and
raised considerable funds.
The next steps
We are conscious of our responsibility
to the global community and will
continue to work abroad to this end. I
met representatives from the Uganda
Wildlife Conservation Education Centre
at an international zoo conference in
2007 and subsequently worked with
the Uganda Wildlife Authority to send
two female lions to Entebbe in 2009.
Both lionesses have since bred, and we
fund the upkeep and veterinary costs
for both of them.
I think there is no better summary
for our work – which I am immensely
proud of – than the compliment
we received from legendary zoo
veterinarian Peter Scott in 2012: “You
used to be regarded as the mavericks
– now you are seen as the pioneers of
the modern zoo.”
We have
committed to
conservation
both
nationally and
internationally
“
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One of many
educational experiences,
feeding our red pandas