Steuart and I have been hoping
we’d have an entirely new “look” for the Gorilla Haven website, but once
we started, the task turned out to be a lot bigger than either of us had thought
it would be! Rather than delay this update, however, here it is …
The
Great Wall of Morganton is now completed and we are now waiting for the first
villa’s steelwork to be made by SEMCO, a local steelwork manufacturer in Blue
Ridge, GA. Hopefully by the end of
the year, Silverback Villa will be nearing completion and we’ll have something
for the various licensing agencies to inspect.
We
have a couple of gorillas in mind to be the first residents at GH. Naturally, it is the ultimate decision of the zoo’s which
“own” these individuals as well as the Gorilla SSP (Species Survival
Plan). Indeed, we believe if we had
our facilities completed by now, we’d have at least one silverback here
already. We’ll probably start the
Group Building (Phase 2) sooner than later too, since zoos have expressed an
interest in using GH as a temporary holding place for breeding, family groups,
while they renovate. The future
promises to be busy and exciting!
September
was filled with houseguests from England, including Richard Parnell, who has
studied western lowland gorillas in Gabon and the Congo for about 10 years.
Phil Ridges, lead keeper at John Aspinall’s Port Lympne zoo and Craig
Gilchrist and Brian Baxter of Paignton Zoo also joined us.
Port Lympne and Paignton have the largest all male gorilla groups in the
world and we all attended a Gorilla Bachelor Group Workshop held at Disney’s
Animal Kingdom in Florida. It was great fun seeing all our old gorilla keeper
friends and colleagues, as well as seeing some of my old gorilla pals from
Chicago and Washington D.C. now housed at Animal Kingdom.
The rest of the fall season is booked with guests and projects (including re-vamping our website!), so stayed tuned and check back here for more updates!