Last week I watched an old (2011) Louis Theroux documentary: America’s Most Dangerous Pets.
It was impossible to feel any empathy with the cruel, crazy rednecks keeping primates and big cats in tiny cages for pleasure and profit. It wouldn’t happen here I thought, until I remembered it had. John Aspinall started small in 1956, in the back garden of his Eaton Place flat. He crammed a capuchin monkey, a nine-week-old tiger and two Himalayan brown bears into a garden shed. Soon he had two zoos in Kent that attracted notoriety for the deaths of keepers killed by the animals in their care. Since 1984 the zoos have been better run and to some purpose. The Aspinall Foundation is a charity promoting wildlife conservation, protecting endangered species and returning captive animals to the wild. It is run by John Aspinall’s son, Damian, and inter alia has Ben Goldsmith and Robin Birley as trustees. Rather sporting of Robin as he was mauled by one of Aspers’ tigers in his childhood. It’s quite a large charity with income of around £2 million, of which about £52,000 is a government grant. Sounds like a good outcome for a project that started in a garden shed in SW1. To be transparent I cannot conceal it’s not all good news.
“The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into The Aspinall Foundation over serious concerns about the charity’s governance and financial management.” (Charity Commission)
Crocodiles of the World is a smaller charity in Oxfordshire – income about £800,000. I digress but when I lived in Bloomsbury and had a hangover, both for six years, I used to repair to the reptile house at London zoo. The subdued lighting, quietness and lack of sudden, or indeed any, movement on the part of the reptiles was balm to my soul.
Our in-house investigative reporter at Number 56 (Robert) spent a day with the keepers at Crockers this week. You want pictures? You can have pictures and a film clip.
This baby tortoise was born in March this year. It is the first Galapagos Tortoise to be bred in the UK. They can live for up to 150 years so no hurry to visit. Here is its father, Dirk, some eighty years old.
Hermann Schlegel, a 19th century German ornithologist and herpetologist, has a freshwater crocodile named after him; Tomistoma Schlegelii. You may not have seen one in the wild as the global population is estimated at fewer than 2,500 mature adults. One made its home in a conservation area at Pangkatan in 2016 and has been joined by a second crocodile. They are a fresh-water, fish-eating species. MP Evans are looking after them in Indonesia.
Crocodiles of the World are looking after them in Oxfordshire where they are called False Gharials. Rare, but not so rare as a real Gharial; there are only about 650 adults left – an improvement on 2006 when there were 250. If Robert squeezes that croc any harder its eyes will pop out.
Here’s a couple of Cuban crocodiles having lunch, served by Robert.