DO WE FEAR OUR TIGERS? NO – BUT YOU MUST RESPECT THEM!
Days after a tiger killed a keeper at a British zoo, our reporter went behind the wire at Ireland’s biggest wildlife park to find out what keeping these incredible animals involves...
There’s always a danger things can go wrong ‘Tigers have different personalities’
PATTAK, a rather rangy looking Sumatran tiger, is lying out flat on a large mound of grass, his tail occasionally flicking upwards while his raised head slowly moves from side to side. Several small children are hopping up and down with excitement at the sight of this very rare mammal. Although it’s unlikely the youngsters are aware of how lucky they are to see such an endangered species up so close and in such a relaxed state — to them he’s just a big stripy tiger with a large head and massive paws.
‘Oh wow, oh wow, look at the big tiger mum, look at it,’ squeals one little girl, barely able to contain herself.
Pattak doesn’t even look in her direction. Instead he drops his head again, his tail lazily swatting away any midges or flies hoping to land on him. It doesn’t look like he plans to move very far today. ‘Some days he’d be happy to lie there all day,’ shrugs Sean McKeown, director of Fota Wildlife Park. ‘He’s very, very laid back.’
Indeed, it’s all rather tranquil in the tiger forest at the Cork-based animal sanctuary. Apart from the intermittent squeals of delight, the only sounds to be heard are the loud calls of a mix of exotic and local birds and the occasional deep roar of a lion. It’s term-time and mid-week but there are dozens of families trooping around the Asian Forest, home to Fota’s tigers, lions and rhinos.
However, despite the peaceful atmosphere here, the tragic news earlier this week that a female zookeeper was mauled to death by one of the tigers in her care at a zoo in England has reminded us that there’s always a danger with a huge predator that things can go wrong.
It was a horrific, and thankfully rare, incident when Rosa King, 33, was killed by a tiger who made its way into an area where she was working at Hamerton Zoo Park in Cambridgeshire.
It was described as a ‘freak accident’ but police have since confirmed they are probing the death in a joint investigation with Huntingdon District Council, which is responsible for the zoo’s licence. Visitors have described some of the chaos they witnessed as Rosa’s colleagues frantically tried to distract the tiger by throwing it lumps of meat.
It’s the second such death in English zoos in less than five years. In 2013, keeper Sarah McClay died when she was mauled by a Sumatran tiger at South Lakes Wild Animal Park, in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria. The zoo was subsequently fined £255,000 (€290,000) after a faulty gate allowed a tiger called Padang to escape its den and pounce as Sarah did her rounds.
You might think that such tragic killings would leave zoo-keepers in other facilities slightly shaken and possibly anxious. But while Sean McKeown is sympathetic about what happened in Hamerton Zoo, he clearly has no concerns about anything similar happening at Fota. And neither, he believes, do his staff.
‘They’re confident here,’ he says. ‘They know we look after the animals and we do it properly. And they’re involved in the design of the enclosures, if there’s something wrong, they know.’
Members of the public, however, don’t have the luxury of knowing the inner workings of places like Fota Wildlife Park, so McKeown has found himself in recent days helping to allay any fears that their visitors might have.
‘People will always ask questions,’ he says. ‘They want to make sure that everything is safe, particularly the people that come here, they know that we’re more open [than traditional zoos].’
But rather than resenting dealing with people’s fears after such tragedies, he says he welcomes the chance to chat to them about the wildlife park.
‘I don’t mind the questions at all, it gives us a chance to talk about other things,’ he says. ‘Like the fact that the Sumatran tigers are so rare and how we need to do more work with them, and how we give money to the Sumatran tiger fund.’
McKeown is seriously passionate about the animals under his care. In the two hours or so we spend touring the Asian Forest, the conversation only ever flows easily when he’s talking about things like recent breakthroughs in DNA testing for sub-species of different animals, his life-long love of gorillas or how their male lion made an eejit of himself when he first arrived at the park, falling off a branch in front of the two female lions.
The entire park is spread out over 100 acres, allowing visitors to see the animals in habitats that are as close to their natural homes as you can get in Ireland.
In 2014 the park opened the Asian Forest, which took almost €6 million to develop. The first animals to be introduced to the new facility were two young Sumatran tigers, Denar from Warsaw Zoo in Poland and Dourga, a female from a facility in Nesles, France.
They’ve since been joined by Pattak, also from a zoo in France. Of the 27 acres that were acquired for the new Asian Forest, two acres were assigned as tiger enclosures.
At the top of the park’s priorities are conservation, education and research, which led to them deciding on Sumatran tigers.
‘Their population size in the wild is quite small, under 300 now,’ says McKeown. Animals are not bought, they are born at other zoos and wildlife parks as part of a breeding program and then handed on.
‘There’s no value put on the animals, you don’t pay for them,’ explains McKeown, who holds the European stud book for the northern cheetah — almost 250 of them have been born here.
As we head towards the tiger forest, we pass through the rhino enclosure where Jamil is lumbering around. Sean points out how fences all around the area are at least 1.2 metres high and explains how the bars are measured to make sure that no heads can get through, no matter how small.
‘There’s a special ball used to check it,’ he says.
But incidents still happen, as he must know. For instance, last year when a small child was photographed playing inside the rhino enclosure at Dublin Zoo.
‘No matter what you do, people will do stupid things,’ he says. ‘We can understand what’s required for the animals a lot better than what’s required for the people.’
We move on to the tiger forest, which has three separate enclosures that are connected by tunnels and
passageways. These can be shut if the keepers want to separate the tigers at different times.
Humans rarely enter the enclosures, McKeown explains, as a concerted effort is made to disturb the tigers and their habitat as little as possible.
An old stone tower has been converted into an impressive viewing area that overlooks one of the enclosures. The wall of reinforced glass is three sheets deep and seven metres high.
It’s a lush thicket of long grass and mature trees, where often the female tiger Dourga can be spotted lounging. On the periphery you can see a huge electrified fence with an overhang.
There are cameras, motion beam sensors and a PTZ system — a movable camera that McKeown can operate from his office. As well as working in Dublin Zoo, he spent more than a decade working in an animal sanctuary in the Far East. He used all of his expertise to help design these enclosures to the highest spec possible.
‘There were also engineers and architects involved,’ he says. ‘We followed world standard guidelines. We then got an independent guy in to look it over, to be double, double sure. His response was that it was over-designed.’
As you walk around the paths between the enclosures, there is a wooden fence about chest high, and a space of a couple of metres separates you from an electric fence that is five metres high with an overhang.
Yet when we spot Pattak sprawled on a grass verge, it feels like we are very close. The Sumatran tigers are the smallest of their kind and Pattak is quite thin and long. McKeown says they’ve tried feeding him up but he’s got the kind of metabolism that makes it hard to put on weight. His name means Bag of Bones in Indonesian, a suitable moniker for his frame.
We stand for a while, staring at his luxurious coat. He seems oblivious to the attention.
‘He doesn’t mind people,’ says McKeown. ‘Tigers are like us, they have different personalities, some are more confident and social, others are more shy.’
But while Pattak seems laid back, he is also incredibly strong and fast. ‘He’d be capable of dragging you off,’ says McKeown. ‘They have an intensity of muscle, so he’d be at least two or three times stronger than you. They move like lightning, not as fast as cheetahs, but over short distances you wouldn’t stand a chance of outrunning them.’
The tigers are largely fed horse meat. ‘It’s particularly expensive,’ says McKeown. ‘It’s mainly horse but sometimes chicken or rabbits that have been shot locally from farms that are overrun.
‘The horse meat comes from an abattoir in Tipperary that supplies horse meat to the continent, so it’s human standard.’
The tigers are fed at a den towards the back of one of the enclosures. It’s also where they sleep at night. Food entices them in at the end of each evening.
‘They are bribed in,’ reveals McKeown. ‘There’s no reason for a keeper to be in an enclosure with the tigers. There’s no physical contact with them at all. The keepers never go in when the animals are in there. In fact they don’t go in all that often at all, we don’t want to disturb the natural habitat.’
But they are prepared if, for whatever reason, something should go wrong.
‘Our staff are highly trained,’ says McKeown. ‘We have escape protocols, they’re all part of the inspection process that we have under our zoo licence. And it’s quite a tough one, Ireland has one of the most tightly inspected zoo processes in Europe.’
In extreme situations, they have the equipment to bring things under control.
‘We have darting equipment and a variety of real guns,’ he says. ‘It’s for public safety and it’s part of the legislation that you have to have them. So some of the keepers are trained in those.’
It’s at this point that we spot Denar, the male tiger who is paired with Dourga.
‘Ahhh there you are Denar,’ shouts McKeown, clearly delighted to see the 140kg cat. ‘I see you, I know you can see me.
‘We are not the best of friends,’ he confides. ‘I helped unload him from his crate when he first arrived here and he remembers it.’
A few moments later Dourga also emerges from the den. They make a very handsome couple.
‘She’s very outgoing, he’s a lot shyer,’ says McKeown. ‘They’re very playful, she’ll go hiding and he’ll be looking for her all around the different enclosures. From the very beginning they got on. You can never be sure, so it was a huge relief. He was a bit nervous at first but he’s come out of himself.
‘We’re hopeful that Dourga will produce a cub shortly. They can have up to three cubs at a time but there can be high mortalities. Sometimes they can be a bit stupid — they don’t always know what to do if they’re a first-time mother.
‘We try not to interfere and leave them to do their own thing. The dream is that they’ll have a couple of cubs, so that they can all play together, be a family.’
The two senior keepers who look after the tigers are both off today.
‘They are both very experienced, that’s why we hired them,’ says Sean. ‘They don’t fear them, they respect them, you don’t mollycoddle them or anything like that.’
And he reminds me of something many visitors are inclined to forget: ‘You’re not there to cuddle them. They’re not pets!’
‘He’d be capable of dragging you off’