All Asian creatures great and small come to Fota

EXOTIC creatures such as tigers, leaf-eating monkeys from Indochina and Asian wild horses are to be brought to Ireland’s only wildlife park as part of a €20 million upgrade.

The first phase of the major redevelopment, the creation of an ‘Asian-themed area’ on a 27-acre extension is expected to get under way this Summer, at Fota Wildlife Park in Co Cork.

Wildlife park director, Dr Neil Stronach, said it is planned to populate the area with wild Asian horses — the ancestors of the modern horse — and Dholes, which are highly social wild dogs. In addition the park has also sourced Takin, a goat-like animal native to the Himalayas.

American landscape design company Jones & Jones is being employed to build slopes in the Asian area especially for these animals and Dr Stronach said he hoped all three species would be installed by next Spring.

The park’s director said that an area had been earmarked for tigers, but they hadn’t decided on whether they would bring in the largest, the Siberian Tiger, or his smaller cousin, the Sumatran Tiger.

The park’s director said that they were also hoping to introduce a number of new primates, although he ruled out the Great Apes at this stage because they would take too much looking after.

“We are looking at a species of endangered gibbons from Java, and leaf-eating monkeys from Indochina which are threatened with extinction. On the list there are also macaque monkeys and we hope to mix them all within a wood. We especially want to create breeding programmes for species which are threatened with extinction,” Dr Stronach said.

“We want to bring in beautiful birds from Asia and more Mandarin Duck. We’re also looking at getting Lesser White-Fronted and Red-Breasted Pheasants,” he said.

Fota Wildlife Park attracted nearly 300,000 visitors last year and its staff are currently preparing to send endangered animals bred in captivity back to their countries of origin.

“Our main goal here is conservation. We’re hoping to send some bison back to the Ukraine for a restocking programme there and then Scimitar-Horned Oryx to Senegal, Algeria and Mauritania,” Dr Stronach said.