It's been a while, however, I am back and pleased to provide another blog from my visit to one of the country's most exciting collections, Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Currently, Yorkshire Wildlife Park houses Amur tigers in their Land of the Tigers exhibit which was opened in 2011 just two years after the collection had originally opened to the public.
Currently, Yorkshire Wildlife Park has four Amur tigers in their collection, the first tiger to arrive was a male named Vladimir. He was born on the 11th May 2009 at Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland, his parents were Sasha, who was genetically very important as she was born at Moscow Zoo and her mother was a wild caught individual and Yuri, who was born in Germany at Duisburg Zoo. Vladmir was the first tiger to arrive at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in 2011, having arrived at just short of two years old, he was still quite a small male tiger. However, since his arrival over six years ago, he has since transformed into a very healthy and big adult male tiger.
The second tiger at Yorkshire Wildlife Park is Sayan, an adult female who lives with Vladimir for most of the time (I will come back to why they're not together 100% of the time). Sayan is the niece of Zambar at Blackpool Zoo as Zamb's sister, Nika is the mother of Sayan. Sayan arrived a few months after Vladimir, in May 2011, she was born on the 3rd August 2008 at Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent. Sayan is easily identifiable as she is slightly cross-eyed, yesterday Sayan and Vladimir were in the right-hand side of Land of the Tigers otherwise known as the waterfall side. Sayan's father is Malchek, who unfortunately passed away several years ago, Nika and Malchek had three cubs in 2008, Sayan and her two brothers, Altay and Altai. Unfortunately, Altai was involved in an incident in Germany, Cologne Zoo, I believe where he had escaped and was shot dead a few years ago.
The third tiger at YWP is Tschuna! Going back to what I said earlier, the reason Vladimir and Sayan aren't together all the time is this lady. The studbook keeper recommended for Vladimir and Tschuna to breed, so when recommended to and when Tschuna is in season, the pair are introduced with the intention of producing offspring. Tschuna is a beautiful tigeress, she was born on the 22nd August 2010 at Wuppertal Zoo to Mymoza and Wassja. Unfortunately, her mother couldn't raise her, therefore she was hand-reared, luckily, Frankfurt Zoo had a Sumatran tigeress cub of a similar age which was being hand-reared, the Sumatran cub, Daseep was then moved to Wuppertal Zoo to be reared with Tschuna. In February 2012, the pair had made the move from Germany over to the West Midlands to move to Dudley Zoo. The pair continued to develop their tiger skills, learning who and what they are and what it takes to be an adult tigeress. On the 6th November 2013, the decision was made to move Tschuna to YWP to allow her to breed with Vladimir and for a new male Sumatran tiger to arrive at Dudley Zoo, thus ending the three year bond which these two females had.
The move to Yorkshire Wildlife Park went swimmingly and Tschuna has since settled in and become a very relaxed tigeress. So relaxed to the point that her and Vladimir had produced their first successful litter of cubs on the 29th March 2015. Two males and one female were born at Yorkshire Wildlife Park and were the first cubs born in history at the park. The cubs were then named Harley, Hector and Hope - raised successfully and splendidly by Tschuna, these three individuals then went onto becoming three successful individual tigers.
This then brings me onto Yorkshire Wildlife Park's fourth and final tiger, Hope who as mentioned above is the offspring of Tschuna and Vladimir. Hope is now separated from Tschuna as in the wild this would happen at around two years old anyway as the tension between mother and daughter over territory grows tremendously as the daughter grows older.
I enjoyed my visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park yesterday, excluding the weather of course. The park was virtually empty with the exception of school visits, however, I spent most of my day with the tigers after a gander around the park. It was very interesting to see Hope on her own and now a lot bigger than my previous visit in August 2016, she was certainly growing into a beautiful tigeress, even though, she occasionally startled herself and that resulted in her falling over. Hope was in the nursery enclosure as she awaits to be moved to another zoo to continue her bloodline. I witnessed Tschuna stalking her numerous times and waiting in a small bush next to her pool before startling Hope again. Tschuna and Sayan actually spent a lot of time interacting through the fence during my time there. Vladimir was more interested in the keepers and eland, though, headed up to the fence quite a few times to check me out. He was pacing his territory and then spent the majority of the time sleeping on the platform, just to the right of the waterfall with Sayan. Tschuna and Hope spent the vast amount of the day watching each other and stalking each other.
That's it for today, folks - let me know what you thought of the blog below; any feedback is highly appreciated. I plan on heading to Blackpool Zoo on Saturday to catch up on Ally and Zamb.
Thanks again guys,
Jordan.
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