• 4 days ago
The charity is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a bold new vision and five-year strategy: Project Carnivora.

The ambitious project will see the transformation of the existing lion pride’s habitat as well as the creation of brand-new habitats for tigers, Arctic foxes and vultures.

It’s the first major project since the building of the Andean bear habitat in 2016, which led to the successful birth of two endangered Andean bear cubs, and is the inspiration for the new carnivore habitats.

The first phase, the lion’s habitat, is currently underway and is expected to be complete by spring 2025.

The second phase will focus on tigers. Noah’s Ark will be working with internationally renowned animal welfare charity AAP (Animal Advocacy and Protection) to provide a forever home for a rescued tiger by summer 2025.

Category

🐳
Animals
Transcript
00:00Noah's Ark Sioux Farm is celebrating its 25th year anniversary with an exciting new development.
00:07Let's step inside to find out about the new project.
00:11We're so excited because we've now started this project you can see behind me.
00:16It's the first big project we've launched since we became a charity last year.
00:21And this is going to be a carnivores project.
00:24The first phase is to create a new space for our lions.
00:27And then we're going to have another space for tigers.
00:30And then the future phases beyond that are going to be arctic foxes and vultures.
00:34They're going to be really exciting spaces.
00:36They're designed for the lions and the tigers to have some great features and enrichments.
00:43So they're designed with the welfare of the lions and the tigers paramount.
00:48And there's also going to be some amazing visitor experiences.
00:51We're going to have a viewing structure right where I'm standing with full length glass.
00:56Two meters high and you can come face to face with a lion and see this amazing landscape behind me.
01:03And we're also going to have some great interactive features.
01:07There's going to be interactive learning.
01:10There's going to be boulders to climb on.
01:12There's going to be balance beams.
01:14And it all mirrors the habitat you can see for the big cats we're creating.
01:18We're going to have similar habitats for people to experience as well.
01:21So they can feel what it's like to be a carnivore.
01:26Can you tell us a bit about how the lion's area has been transformed for the lion's welfare?
01:34Yeah, so the new habitat is being designed completely with them in mind.
01:39We've picked out the best parts of their previous slash current enclosure.
01:44We're enhancing them to make it better, offer better enrichment opportunities.
01:51And just with them completely in mind.
01:54So for example, one of our male lions, Tao, he absolutely loves being in high places.
02:00So he can see everything, see across the zoo.
02:03So as you can see behind, there is the really impressive mound we've got with the cave.
02:08He'll be able to sit right up there and see everything that's going on.
02:11Yeah, so we've got lots of strategic goals that we want to achieve as a charity.
02:16And those are around conservation, about inspiring people with nature.
02:22So the species that we are looking at, we are trying to fulfill those goals really.
02:27So we've got conservation goals that we want to do, particularly with vultures and with tigers.
02:32We want to create some really fantastic animal welfare demonstrations here.
02:36So we want to showcase what can be done and how well animals can be looked after.
02:41So things that we've got expertise in already and some new species as well.
02:46We've never kept a dog species at Noah's Ark before.
02:48So we're looking forward to bringing in the Arctic foxes.
02:50They're going to be really good for our sensory-led interpretation and providing people with,
02:57because they're so active, they're going to be a really interesting animal to have in the collection.
03:02And hopefully create lots of moments that people are going to be inspired by.

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