The Big Animal Count with Aspinall Foundation
Well, it’s that time of the year again at the Aspinall Foundation parks. After enjoying plenty of festive cheer over Christmas and New Year, it’s back to work for the keepers at the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park as they have the unenviable tasks of counting up all the animals across the park!
This is all part of a national census for all zoos, parks and animal collections across the country to find out the number of animals we house in the UK. It’s our very own wildlife Magna Carta! Remember that the Aspinall Foundation park is set over 600 acres of land, so it’s no mean feat to find all the animals that live there to be recorded. As one of the largest wildlife parks in the country, they house over 70 species of animal, and even though it might be easy to count the big animals, the smaller species could well prove slightly trickier customers!
Animal Director, Adrian Harland, said –
This is something that happens every year – however we count our animals on a daily basis. WE make sure the big cats are all present and correct before we open every day. For the census this year we have already counted the larger animals so it’s time now to concentrate on our equally popular but slightly smaller residents – the meerkats, iguana and tortoises.
Home to not only amazing African elephants, giraffes and black rhinos, the park also has a wide variety of small animals such as meerkats, marmosets and even two honey badgers. Over Christmas I was pleased to find out that I had adopted ‘Tyson’ the honey badger as a Christmas present from my brother, and I look forward to going down to visit him in 2013.
I must admit that I am a bit obsessed with honey badgers when I first became aware of them, so to now adopt one is amazing. I’m not going to turn this article into a honey badger fest (OK, I already have!), but check out our dedicated page, where you can learn more about these amazing animals and join me in sponsoring one. There really is nothing like them on earth, so if you haven’t been astounded by what these creatures get up to, have a look…
you are sure to be surprised!