201218Sep06:23

New Tiger Ter­ri­tory to be opened in Lon­don Zoo in 2013

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 18 Sep­tem­ber 2012 | mod­i­fied 18 Sep­tem­ber 2012
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tigerZSL Lon­don Zoo is just six months away from “bring­ing down the bars” once again, as a project for a brand-​new £3.6m enclo­sure for one of the world’s most endan­gered ani­mals gets under­way. Tiger Ter­ri­tory, which will be home to critically-​endangered Suma­tran tigers, is begin­ning to take shape at ZSL Lon­don Zoo, where the 186-​year-​old site is under­go­ing a mas­sive rede­vel­op­ment to make way for the 2,500sqm enclosure.

The result of a large pub­lic fundrais­ing cam­paign by ZSL Lon­don Zoo, Tiger Ter­ri­tory will give mil­lions of zoo vis­i­tors the chance to get close to these incred­i­ble ani­mals and pro­vide a cen­tral hub for ZSL’s tiger con­ser­va­tion work when it opens in spring 2013. Vis­i­tors to Tiger Ter­ri­tory will embark on a jour­ney through an Indone­sian habi­tat, com­ing face-​to-​face with beau­ti­ful tigers through the floor-​to-​ceiling glass windows.

Five times the size of the cur­rent tiger enclo­sure, the new exhibit has been designed with ZSL’s team of tiger keep­ers, con­ser­va­tion­ists and experts to ensure that it per­fectly suits the big cats’ needs. Tigers are excel­lent climbers and like to observe their ter­rain from a tow­er­ing van­tage point and Tiger Ter­ri­tory will allow them to do just that. The exhibit will fea­ture tall trees for the cats to scale and high feed­ing poles to encour­age their nat­ural preda­tory behav­iours. Unusu­ally for cats, tigers love water, and vis­i­tors will be able to see them hang­ing out in their custom-​built pool. When they’re not play­ing in the water, the tigers will have all-​day access to indoor dens where vis­i­tors will be able to see the big cats relaxing.

Care­fully planted to mimic the trop­i­cal foliage of the island of Suma­tra, the Zoo’s team of expert hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ists stud­ied images of native Indone­sian flora, taken by zookeeper Teague Stub­bing­ton on a recent visit to ZSL’s tiger con­ser­va­tion project.

Work­ing around the world to try to reverse the fate of the Suma­tran tiger, Tiger Ter­ri­tory will enable ZSL to breed tigers at ZSL Lon­don Zoo and learn more about these elu­sive ani­mals to apply to its field con­ser­va­tion projects.

The Euro­pean breed­ing pro­gramme and the Global Man­age­ment Species Pro­gramme for Suma­tran tigers are both coor­di­nated by ZSL Lon­don Zoo — where ZSL’s spe­cial­ists are respon­si­ble for ensur­ing a healthy and diverse pop­u­la­tion of tigers in zoos around the world.

With Tiger Ter­ri­tory, 2013 is set to be the year of the tiger at ZSL Lon­don Zoo.

The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at ZSL’s web­site. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Source: ZSL news, 10.09.2012)

UN Biodiversity decade
Fight for Flight campaign

Goal: 7000 tigers in the wild

Tiger range countries map

Tiger map” (CC BY 2.5) by Sander­son et al., 2006.

about zoos and their mis­sion regard­ing breed­ing endan­gered species, nature con­ser­va­tion, bio­di­ver­sity and edu­ca­tion, which of course relates to the evo­lu­tion of species.
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