Zoo Director Scott Gregory could barely contain his excitement. Great Bend’s Brit Spaugh Zoo is getting two grizzly bears and two lions next month. All four animals were born in January and are coming from the Living Treasures Animal Park at Donegal, Pa.
The zoo is also expecting an African serval cat to be flown in next month from New Zealand, and may be close to finding a male arctic fox it can breed with the female acquired last year from Canada, Gregory announced Thursday at the Great Bend Zoological Society’s annual meeting.
In a night of “big announcements,” Gregory also said the zoo is working to bring “Jungle” Jack Hanna, star of TV shows “Into the Wild” and “Jack Hanna’s Wild Countdown,” to Great Bend in 2014.
“We are proud to say we have some cool new animals coming in,” Gregory said, noting that the zoo’s geriatric animal population has been dwindling since he took over as zoo director in 2010. “We’ve had a lot of animals pass away recently. We knew it was coming.”
A panther, white Bengal tiger and black bear are among the animals that have died in the past year. Since 2010, the zoo has also lost a binturong (bearcat), a sloth, wolf and a jaguar, among others. In each case, a necropsy was done to determine cause of death. Cancers were common, as were symptoms of old age.
The white tiger, named Spirit, was only 15 years old but suffered from stomach problems and arthritis. All white tigers in North America are mutations produced through inbreeding that causes a number of defects in addition to the rare pigmentation.
Earlier this week, Gregory told the Great Bend Tribune that the recent death of another animal, the zoo’s second sloth, remains a mystery. The sloth was not elderly and results of a necropsy were inconclusive.
As the circle of life continues, more animals will pass away over time, Gregory acknowledged, but now the zoo is also seeing some babies. Those who attended Thursday’s meeting got to pet two chinchilla babies, or kits. As mentioned earlier, there are plans to breed arctic foxes. The zoo will also attempt to find a female serval to mate with the new male it is getting.
“That’s what we want to see around here – babies,” he said.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums rates the viability of animals with the colors of a traffic light: green for common, yellow for animals if there is a concern for their continued survival and red for endangered species. The servals and arctic foxes are “yellow” animals, as are Jamaican boa snakes. Brit Spaugh Zoo also has two of the Jamaican boas for possible breeding, Gregory said. “They’re pretty rare.”
The new bears and lions won’t be bred, however. Both pairs of animals are brothers and sisters, the director said, adding they are “green” animals. “We’re not going to breed them, because grizzly bears (and lions in zoos) are over-populated.”
However, the lions will be somewhat unusual, he said. They are a larger-than-usual species known as Barbary lions, or Atlas lions. Even though they are a “green” species in zoos, this subspecies from northern Africa has been considered extinct in the wild since 1922.
The zoo still has some older lions and an older grizzly bear. Gregory said once the new animals arrive at the zoo, the old and new animals will be out in public view on alternating days.
Zoo Society members will get the first chance to see new animals, said Joe Cannon, the current president of the zoo’s supporting organization. During Thursday’s meeting, members elected two new members to the Zoo Society’s Board of Directors, Karen Shaner and Brandon Lawellin. Scott Donovan and Rickee Maddox are stepping down from the board.
Memberships to the Zoo Society are $25 a year for individuals or families, and are available at the zoo and the Front Door in Great Bend.