New animals are arriving on schedule this month at Great Bend’s Brit Spaugh Zoo.
A male arctic fox arrived last Saturday, although it will be a few weeks before he is available for public viewing. Zoo policy requires all new arrivals to spend some time in quarantine, a safety precaution that protects the other animals from any disease or parasite they may be carrying, Zoo Director Scott Gregory said.
However, members of Great Bend’s Zoological Society can see the new fox, along with two lion cubs and two grizzly bear cubs, at 6 p.m. Monday. The bears and lions come from the Living Treasures Animal Park at Donegal, Pa.
Gregory, along with Zoo Society members Joe Cannon and Dr. Penny Quinn, drove to Pennsylvania this week, stopping at the zoo in Columbus, Ohio, where Jack Hannah is director emeritus. Gregory is working to get Hannah to come to Great Bend in 2014, but nothing is official yet. Hannah is the star of such TV shows as “Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures.”
The crew arrived in Donegal on Wednesday and they should be back in Great Bend Thursday morning after a 16-hour drive.
“The grizzly bears are going through a growth spurt,” Gregory said. “Apparently one of the grizzly bears in an ornery little guy,” he added.
The bears will share the house with the zoo’s adult female grizzly, but will be in a different room.
Likewise, the lion cubs will be in the same enclosure but in a room separate from the male and female lion, a pair which had a combined weight of 750 pounds, last time they were weighed. They were born on Oct. 26, 1996.
The new animals are also siblings – the lions are brothers and sisters, and the sexes of the bears are still unknown. Therefore, there are no plans to breed them, but Gregory said.
The zoo has talked to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums about placing one bear and bringing in another for breeding, but both the bears and the lions are a species that is very common in zoos. The AZA prefers to encourage breeding of rare animals.
Once all of the new animals are settled in, it will take at least two visits to the zoo to see them all. The young animals will alternate with the adults for being outside in the part of the exhibit open to viewing.
The zoo is still expecting to get an African serval cat from New Zealand, possibly this month. That animal will travel by air.
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.