The BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops will be adding to its collection of animals this year.
General manager Glenn Grant says the park will be taking animals from a zoo in Quebec that was shut down, and says the public will be able to see them by September.
“We’re going to take a couple of marble foxes, and an American mink will be coming our way. We’re not sure exactly on the shipping time and dates and things like that, and then once they arrive here they’ll have to quarantined for 30 days, obviously for testing, before they can be brought in to the collections.”
Grant says the park will also be taking in Przewalski horses, wild Mongolian horses which are an endangered species, beginning either this fall or next spring – which will be in the space where Cherry the Moose lived in, before she passed away in the spring.
“There’s a lot paperwork to bring them back to the park. They used to be here years ago, some folks from Kamloops will remember them being here, and they’re going into the same space. So when the Przewalski horses left, the moose went into that space. Now the moose is gone and we’re maybe going to bring the horses back,” Grant says.
“They’re part of a species survival plan; they want to breed them throughout institutions around the country and then the offspring get released.”