 Have
you seen a giraffe through your child’s eyes?
I guarantee
it can be a scene of joy and delight. When we re-discover our
children we also re-discover the child in ourselves.
Fossil
Rim is not just a drive through Wildlife Park, it's
so much more. We offer fun, adventures, educational tours
you can enjoy with your entire family, superb accommodations,
mouthwatering
meals, a
rustic lodge with 5 rooms and the Foothills
Safari Camp with 7 air-conditioned tent cabins that will keep you
frosty
this summer.
During the
week there are less people, which means it's
quiet and you can spread out and enjoy a moonlit walk around
the campfire, spend time under the spectacular star lit show
while roasting marshmallows with
your family
and receive a 25% discount
Sunday through Thursday. It doesn't
get better than this.
Come join
us for your summer fun. More
information.
Jan
Bussey
Education
Specialist
About
Jan
What's
Gnu?
Mary Jo one
of our Animal Care Specialists is attending a global cheetah
disease workshop this weekend at White Oak. Topics will include
testing requirements, what the tests mean, and develop consistency
within the captive population in relation to disease surveillance.
Remember
Maximus? Well, our friends at White Oak tell us he’s
doing marvelous and is socializing nicely with a female from a
litter born at White Oak just a couple of months prior to Max’s
birth at Fossil Rim. He’s been recently introduced to a cheetah
lure which our cats like to chase and Max was a natural. In his
typical “Maximus fashion, he skipped right past the “shyness
phase” and took up the chase the moment the lure took off.
Max Photos
More about
White Oak
You will find
three Grant’s zebra in the front pasture now.
We have moved in our former stud from the heard in the Giraffe
pasture and replaced him with a new, young stud. The new fellow
is not too difficult to find. Look for the one with the whiter
background coloring and stripes that get a great deal smaller around
the belly.
See who can
be the first in your car to find him.
 New
Kids on the Block
We
have baby cheetahs! Friday night Amstel gave birth to 2 babies.
She is being pretty calm about it all so the cheetah
facility will not be roped off. Mary Jo, one of our animal
care specialists, is extremely happy that there are two babies
since a single cub would
end up
having to be hand reared.
Spring
births continue
• Two red deer calves
• Two gemsbok
• White tail fawns
• Axis fawns
• Eighty five Attwater’s Prairie Chicks
• Sable calf
• One grant zebra foal
• Thirteen wildebeest calves.
 Distinguished
Resident
The Myth
of the Silent Giraffe
Haven’t
we all heard that giraffes don’t make any noise? Well,
current studies are disproving this myth. Our modern technologies
are telling us that giraffes may be talking after all, just
not so that we can hear. Giraffes are now thought to use
low frequency sounds (below our range of hearing) to communicate
with one another. Infrasound, as this is known, is believed
to be able to travel further through soil and air than the
higher pitched sounds. Being able to communicate over long
distances is important to giraffes, which will often be found
scattered for miles across their extended ranges in Africa.
Continued >>
What
Exactly is C2S2?
Last month
our Executive Director, Pat Condy, wrote about Fossil Rim’s
involvement in the new Conservation Centers Species Survival
(C2S2) consortium which was formed this past May. Dr. Condy’s
article sparked a lot of interest from our readers so we
wanted to expound a bit on what this new arrangement means
for Fossil Rim and for conservation in general.
To help
explain further, we asked one of our Board members, David
Thompson,
to share a little insight.
Continued >>
Protect
and Preserve is what IMA is all About
By Adam
Eyres
Animal Care Specialist
IMA stands
for Intensive Management Area. It is off display to the public
because of the need to more intensively manage the species
that live there. For instance, Maned Wolves are very nervous
when they have pups and we can control their environment
much better than we could if they were out where the public
has access to them. Same with the other wolves (Red and Mexican
Grey). The black rhinos are back there mostly because of
the work that we do with them. The Attwater’s Prairie
Chickens are most likely the most endangered bird in Texas
and possibly North America (although they now think they
have found a population of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers that
will take that top spot in endangered status)
All that
said, however, we do allow guests to visit the IMA with a
guide.
Guests can join one of the vehicle tours with
a guide from our education department, or they can join us
on a mountain
bike tour and go with one of our bike tour
guides. Only guided visitors are allowed in the IMA.
Have a
suggestion for our newsletter? Send
us an email.
P.S. To
make sure you receive our e-mails, please add editor@fossilrim.org to
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