Conservation

Cotswold Wildlife Park Conservation Trust

The Cotswold Wildlife Park Conservation Trust was registered as a charity on 20^th August 2013. The Trust was formed to raise funds for the conservation of animal species and endangered environments and to educate and inform the public, including visitors to the Wildlife Park, about the activities that we fund.

The money we raise comes from various sources, including other zoological collections where we have joint funding commitments, visitors to the Wildlife Park who donate to specific causes, general donations and legacies and a bulk grant from Cotswold Wildlife Park Ltd.

We spend our funds supporting other organisations and charities whose aims coincide with ours and we also directly support protected areas for Greater Bamboo Lemurs and Crowned Sifakas in Madagascar.

Organisations supported by us are carefully vetted and monitored by our trustees to ensure that any money we donate is primarily spent on conservation activities rather than administration.

The current trustees are: Reggie Heyworth, Jamie Craig and Stuart Fox.

Impact Madagascar

Impact Madagascar is an online shop where you can purchase themed Madagascar merchandise. All proceeds from sales go to funding current and future projects in Madagascar. You can find the website here: www.cafepress.com/impactmadagascar

At the Park, we are involved in many breeding programmes for endangered species.

These can be either European Studbooks (ESB) or European Endangered Species Programmes (EEP). These studbooks contain information about every individual in the European captive population to ensure that animals remain healthy and that research, husbandry improvements and conservation are a priority. Each studbook is managed by an animal professional who compiles all relevant data for a species and provides recommendations for pairings, promotes conservation projects and distributes information on the species as widely as possible. The Cotswold Wildlife Park is responsible for running or monitoring the ESB/EEP of Greater Bamboo Lemur, Black and White Ruffed Lemur, Red Breasted Goose, European Spoonbill, Yellow Mongoose, Prevost’s Squirrel and Mount Omei Babbler.

The Park is actively involved in conservation in the wild. As well as raising funds for these projects, we also raise awareness with talks and presentations.

Sifaka Conservation

This project aims to protect Crowned Sifaka in forest fragments in Central and Western Madagascar. Very small family groups of this species have been found in tiny patches of the remaining forest and we are working towards the management of these groups as part of a “metapopulation”. As well as funding, we have provided this project with camping equipment, radios, capture equipment and technical assistance. Techniques learned from this project may well prove extremely useful, not only for the population of Crowned Sifaka, but for many other species throughout the world that are currently at risk from habitat destruction. For further information on the project https://impactmadagascar.org/

Project Bamboo Lemur and Helpsimus

A project dedicated to the discovery and protection of new groups of this little known lemur, one of the worlds most endangered Primates. We have been heavily involved with the project since its inception and have watched it go from strength to strength in recent years. Many of the observations we have made from our small group at the Park have been made available to researchers working in the field and in some cases, have not been seen before. Please click the link to the bizarre courtship display of our male Ivongo.
www.helpsimus.org

Hornbill nest monitoring project

We are proud to support this scheme, where members of the local communities monitor the nest sites of hornbill pairs and supply us with information on wild diets, chicks reared and preferred nest sites.
http://www.hornbill.or.th

TUSK Trust

We use money from our Keeper for a Day scheme to fund, amongst others, the Serengeti Rabies Vaccination project which focusses on the vaccination of domestic dogs in villages surrounding the Serengeti. This is vital to prevent the spread of the disease to wild carnivores, and to limit infection in the human population.
www.tusk.org

Wild Camel Protection Foundation

Despite their familiarity, wild camels are declining fast. The Wild Camel Protection Foundation, founded by John Hare, aims to protect the critically endangered wild Camel (Camelus ferus) and its habitat in the fragile and unique desert ecosystems in the Gobi desert in north-west China and south-west Mongolia. It is the only charitable environmental foundation in the world which has this exclusive objective.
www.wildcamels.com

Other projects we are involved in and charities we support at the Park include:

• White Stork Re-introduction Project
• Falklands Conservation
• The World Parrot Trust
• Songbird Survival Trust
• Whitley Fund for Nature
• Roy Dennis Foundation (Sea Eagle Project)
• Nestbox Monitoring Scheme (local native species)
• Friends of Wychwood Forest