Message from James

Hi everyone,

Having re-ordered the blog slightly I am just going to make it clear to everyone...

• The Founder Pride Page will give background information on the lions in Safari Parks focusing on Woburn Safari Park.
• The Linton Lions Page will give background information on the lions at Linton Zoo, these lions descended from Woburn Safari Park.
• The Linton Lions to Uganda Page gives information on a programme set up by Paradise Wildlife Park sending lions back to the their native country via the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre. One of the first lionesses sent back was born at Linton Zoo.

What I have essentially done is split up the Meet The Lions Page to try and make it more focused and therefore easier to add more and more information and explain things in more detail.

However I have not finished yet, with more collections to include they will be sorted in the method showed below...

• Lions From Woburn Safari Park
• Lions from Longleat Safari Park
• Lions from West Midlands Safari Park
• Lions from Blair Drummond

With all Zoo lion being descended from these three major UK Safari Parks it splits them up into almost seperate (although not majorly) 'blood groups'. Aswell as giving information on the lions in these collections that descend from these prides, I will also provide information on the prides themselves.

It is just that in the case of Woburn Safari Park and Linton Zoo I have given them pages of their own.

Sadly due to the case of very little petrol money, while I wait for my surgery before I start my apprenticeship full time, I have not been able to visit Linton to see Zuri, Safi, Rizi and Karla. But I do have regular updates on them from the keepers, and I really cannot wait to see them again as soon as I can.

However yesterday I got the train up to London to go to London Zoo in the afternoon, and to a talk on Tiger Conversation, I managed to meet some rather important people within the Zoo community which was fantastic, as well as author David Prynn.

But the highlight of my day was the half hour that I spent watching the little group of Asiatic Lions. I sat by the window for about 10 minutes for the young female to come and say hello as you can see below!

She was then interuppted by her little sister, who is just over a year old who sat by the wall for another ten minutes, and I still sat by the window patiently coaxing him over, which she did, and she came up to say hello.

I decided to use some of the behaviour that I have observed in the years that I have watched Zuri and Safi, in trying to coax over the lions at London Zoo. Fortunately for me it was very quiet, apart from with the little female, a man very gladly took the two photos for me! These lions being in a zoo such as this will be used to so much public attention that to see them behave like this and actually take notice of myself, when for most of the day other visitors were at the window was fantastic.

I hope you all enjoyed the pictures, and I hope you have a good look around the new pages in the blog.

Cheers,

James