Conservation

We have worked hard over the past few years to make a concerted effort towards doing more for conservation, both within our park and for the global animal and wildlife communities. If you would like to read our full conservation policy it is available here. However this page is designed to summarise that work and show how the policy is having a real world impact.

Membership organisations

We have worked hard to be incorporated as members within various membership organisations which make a positive impact on wildlife conservation, whether through streamlined information sharing, animal management policies or educational outreach:

Studbooks

Studbooks are what help zoos ensure that the animals which they keep and breed remain of the highest possible genetic caliber. Through working closely with other zoos and organisations, sharing information and adhering to breeding recommendations we are able to help make a positive impact on the captive population of a number of endangered species. The most common of these programs are the European Endangered Species Programs (EEP), European Studbooks (ESB) and International Studbooks (ISB). At present we are working with the following 21 managed programs (7 x ESB species & 14 x EEP species):

Furthermore we do not only work with these programs but also try to get involved with the bureaucratic side of trying to coordinate all of these animals on an international level. As such we also have the following studbook involvements:

In-Situ Work

Most of our in-situ conservation work (work which is done with certain animals and / or habitats in the wild) is done with partners as this allows us to better understand and deploy the work required on the ground, especially when this is carried out in a different country. The work which we are currently carrying out around the world includes:

Asian In-Situ Conservation

Khe Nuoc Trong

Forests in Vietnam (in this case Khe Nuoc Trong) are threatened by degradation due largely to illegal logging, farming and other land conversion uses. We are supplying funding to aid with the work which our partner, World Land Trust carries out in the region with a third partner called Viet Nature. Read more about this work here. 

African In-Situ Conservation

Bwindi chimpanzee enhancement program

It is thought that on an average day 383,656 people are born around the world, whilst the death rate is much lower at 159,160 people per day.  As a result the global population increases by 1 person every 0.38 seconds.  We need to try to find new places for as many as 224,496 new people on the planet to live and to produce food for them.  This inevitably puts a strain on the planet and the limited resources it has. We are collaborating with our partner, the Population Sustainability Network whom we support financially with £15,000 per year to allow them to run their USHAPE project (Uganda Sexual Health & Pastoral Education).   Read more about this work here. 

Other Conservation Work

The majority of our conservation work is in the field of conservation education, through meeting school classes and giving them animal or class room talks to meeting our visitors in the park at our touch table displays and just by providing signs on our habitats to show them important information about animals in the wild. However some of the more specific projects which we are involved in include:

Lobbying

When we feel passionate about a specific project or cause then we will tell the people and institutions involved how we feel, and if we are very passionate and this appears to be by-passing those decision makers, we may even get our visitors to help with our lobbying efforts. Two of our most prominent and on-going of these are our lobbying efforts to improve the RSPO certification for palm oil and encouraging supermarkets to look deeper in to their supply chain regarding palm oil.

Sustainability policies

This is one of the easiest ways in which you too can make a difference to conservation, by living more sustainably. For a business such as ours it is a long process to change our ways and ensure that we are as sustainable as possible in all things we do, whether it is energy consumption or plastic use. Our general sustainability policy can be found here, however where we feel like we take the biggest strides and try to go above and beyond what most organisations do is with our palm oil policy.

Research

Conservation research can be as varied as looking at improving husbandry techniques for certain species (both in captivity or the wild) to seeing how effective a sustainability certificate is. We try to get involved with as many of these kids of research projects as possible and you can read our full research policy here. However an overview of all of the research with which Wingham Wildlife Park has been involved can be seen below: