LONGLEAT keepers are hoping love is in the ear for a pair of the world’s smallest foxes. These super-cute Fennec foxes, Anthony and Zuri, are part of an international breeding programme for the diminutive canines at the safari park. Reaching a maximum length of under 40 cms and weighing less than two kilogrammes, the fennec…
A TEAM of carpenters, tilers and scaffolders have rescued Bere Marsh Farm’s barn owls from winter homelessness in the nick of time. Just a few months after the Countryside Restoration Trust purchased the farm near Shillingstone, an appeal was launched to raise funds to repair the building which has been the barn owls’ home for…
SOUTH Somerset District Council is working with organisations including the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust to save the rare Shrill Carder bee. The council’s team at Ham Hill Country Park has started habitat management to encourage the bees to recolonise from an existing population nearby. The work is centred around the hay meadows in the flat…
WHO needs Easter eggs when you can have the real life drama and delight of peregrine falcons laying eggs and nurturing their clutch on one of Britain’s greatest gothic cathedrals. The Salisbury Cathedral peregrines have two eggs, which can be seen via the peregrine webcam (see below). The cathedral team, led by Gary Price, the…
THE National Trust has announced plans to release Eurasian beavers[at two sites in the south of England next spring to help with flood management and to improve biodiversity. The beaver reintroductions will be the Trust’s first, linking to its ambitions to create priority habitats for nature and to increase the diversity of species and wildlife…
A MALE koala has been flown from Osaka in Japan to join Longleat’s koala programme. The 12-year-old marsupial was flown from Osaka Tennoji Zoo and accompanied on the flight by his Japanese keepers and vet who are helping him settle in to his new home. His arrival means Longleat now has what is believed to…
LONGLEAT is spearheading an international breeding and awareness-building programme for Australia’s iconic and increasingly threatened koala. Later this year the Wiltshire estate, which opened the world’s first drive-through safari outside Africa in 1966, will receive a group of up to six southern koalas from Cleland Wildlife Park in Adelaide. After spending time in quarantine the…
AN abandoned cheetah cub is being hand reared by her keeper at Longleat. The female cub, which has been nicknamed Xena after the warrior princess to mark her battling qualities, spent the first 10 days being cared for by her mum Wilma. However she was discovered cold, weak and on her own in mid-April and…