Portuguese exchange students visited salt workshop and nature zoo
Rheine/Leiria. Francisco has certainly taken many cell phone photos in his young life. Among them certainly many “selfies” of himself with other or beautiful backgrounds. The pictures are then gladly shown to friends, and they then decide whether it was successful or terribly wrong.
When Francisco Ewald (name changed by the editors) showed the selfie of himself and Ewald, the latter reached for his cell phone with one hand, looked at the photo together with the guest from Portugal and seemed quite satisfied.
Francisco takes a selfie with the Barbary ape. This one lets it calmly go over itself.
Now Ewald is not a human being, but a Barbary ape. Francisco took a picture of him and himself and then showed the photo. What was quite dangerous. Barbary macaques rarely bite, but they “steal” everything they can get their hands on. They dash away with it and up to the next tree. Most of the time, getting a new one is the result of this brief encounter.
All went well for Francisco and the other 25 students from our sister city Leiria.
Before heading far away to Bad Bentheim and Münster in the next few days, they took advantage of the good things nearby today: the Saline Park.
First they went to the salt workshop, where the students could boil salt themselves. Then it was off to the nature zoo, through which Clemens Schöpker, who has organized and accompanied this student exchange for many years, guided them with a great deal of expertise.
At seal feeding time, it was fortunate that the students were able to watch a trainee examining the animals and performing little “tricks” under the guidance of two animal keepers.
Then it was off to the monkey forest with the large Berber family. As a precaution, the young people had stowed their backpacks in lockers specially provided for this purpose, because, as mentioned above: Barbary macaques like to steal…
After a joint lunch in the zoo bistro, we went to the jeladas or also called blood-breasted baboons. Here Clemens Schöpker explained one of the special features of the nature zoo Rheine:
Dscheladas: Extinct mountain people
Blood-breasted baboons or Dscheladas live in nature exclusively in the highlands of Ethiopia on mountain meadows and rocky gorges at an altitude of about 3000 meters. Due to the expansion of agricultural land even at these altitudes, as well as climate change, which threatens the mountain meadows more and more by bush encroachment, the population of the jeladas is highly endangered.
In the nature zoo Rheine live two groups, which are accommodated separately from each other, so that it does not come to arguments. A harem consists of one adult male and up to eight females with young.
Blood-breasted baboons are pure vegetarians and feed mainly on grasses, roots and herbs. In zoos, they are fed grass, hay, hay pellets and vegetables.
Even in zoos, jeladas are rarely seen. To safeguard the population of these primates, European zoos cooperate in a European Conservation Breeding Program (EEP), which is coordinated by NaturZoo Rheine, as is the International Studbook.
Under the EEP, each species is managed by a zoo: the local coordinator maintains the population’sstudbook. He makes recommendations on how to mate individual animals to maintain an optimalgene pool, and also determines which animals should not be matched because of therisk of inbreeding. He can also assemble new groups and organize exchanges between the breeders involved.
In the best case, an EEP results in a healthy, self-sustaining population in zoos and additional animals can bereintroducedto support or rebuild wild populations.
NaturZoo is involved in 22 European Conservation Breeding Programs – including those for bearded monkeys, varis, tigers, forest bustards, Bali starlings and others.
Info: https://www.naturzoo.de/