Safari West has long been the place to go if you want an African safari without the expense of a trip to Africa. Since July 4th, 1993, we have loaded up our Power Wagons and taken generations of human beings out to meet generations of exotic animals. Even before that opening day, however, Safari West was here, quietly waiting to welcome an excited public. What were we doing back then? What was the role of this place back before the trucks and the tents and the crowds? In a word, breeding.

Before Safari West ever established itself as a place for the curious-minded to discover the majesty of nature, it was a place of refuge for the vulnerable and endangered species of the wider world. You see, not all that long ago, we humans realized that one thing we could do to try and help an ailing species is to take in a few of them and try to keep them alive (and reproducing) in a protected environment. This has since become one of our most useful conservation tools. Captive populations serve as reservoirs of genetic variability and if successfully managed, can be used to shore up diminishing wild populations. Head-start programs in which captive-bred juvenile organisms are raised in a protected space before release into the wild are increasingly common.

These captive populations are also valuable for scientific observation, allowing cheaper and easier methods of studying a species than excursions to a wilderness continents away. While there’s no substitute for observing an animal in its natural habitat, a great deal can be learned from captive observation. Not only informative to working scientists, captive animals can also be invaluable ambassadors for their species. We humans tend to be much more concerned about species we have a personal connection with and captive animals can provide that connection to those humans who come to zoos and wildlife parks. Many people support tiger conservation. Perhaps the pangolin would also enjoy an army of advocates if they could be found in captivity.

Safari West has always taken great pride in our captive breeding program. Over the years our strategy of providing the animals with space, nutrition, and comfort and letting nature take its course has proven wildly successful. Visitors to our property will nearly always find a baby kudu, ibis, Nile lechwe, wildebeest, giraffe, bongo, monkey, serval, zebra, crested screamer, or, well you get the idea. While babies are most common in spring, there’s nearly always at least a few newborns on the property.  We’re pretty good at creating the necessary atmosphere for successful breeding, and honestly, we’re getting better all the time.

Lately, we’ve enjoyed a spate of new arrivals and improvements in both our established breeding programs and some of our newer projects. While we’ve long been home to a successful fennec fox program, we recently enjoyed an unexpected surprise. These diminutive and shy desert foxes are generally disinclined to reproduce in the presence of the viewing public. In the world of captive breeding, if you are trying to entice your fennec foxes to reproduce, it’s usually mandatory that you take them off-display and give them some privacy. Some weeks back our carnivore keepers noticed a behavioral change in our female fox. During feeding times she was taking food and retreating to the subterranean den in her habitat. Intuiting that this might mean baby foxes, our keepers decided to restrict access to the habitat. For a few weeks, guides and visitors detoured around the fox habitat, whispering about the suspected situation. After nearly a month of mystery, one of our keepers was lucky enough to see a tiny fox face poking out from the entrance of the burrow. We’ve since confirmed three little kits. Now that they’re through the delicate first weeks of their infancy, the foxes have been taken off display so that they can grow and develop without the distraction of large human crowds.

Around this same time, one of our pairs of striped hyenas gave birth to two cubs. Safari West became a home to four hyenas only within the last two years. That initial group was paired off and currently live in two separate habitats. It is beyond exciting to have experienced breeding success with animals that have been at Safari West for such a comparatively short period of time. As with the fox kits, our hyena cubs are being kept carefully off-display and under the intense protection not only of their real parents but of their keeper parents as well.

In news directly tied to one of our most critically endangered specimens, Safari West recently increased the size of our flock of Waldrapp’s Ibises to nine. This vulture-looking bird is among the most endangered bird species in the world. Once ranging across North Africa, the Middle East, and much of Europe, the species has declined to just a few cliff-side colonies found in Morocco. The wild population of these birds is now thought to be around 600 animals or less. While Safari West was already home to a small colony, we had not yet achieved breeding success. Our new acquisitions came from the San Francisco Zoo and have increased the size of our colony significantly. As these birds are colony nesters, it is our hope that with greater numbers in their flock, we will see more vigorous nesting behavior from our birds in the upcoming breeding season.

Safari West is never boring, either as a place to come visit, or a place to come work. Every day our wild animals surprise and delight guests and staff members alike. We currently have the children and grandchildren of our residents flying and roaming in zoos and wildlife parks around the country. Every year, we send more of our youngsters out into the world to grow up, mate, and continue the long histories of their respective species. We are working hard to protect some fascinating and vulnerable species and ensuring that there is always another healthy generation to follow this one is the first step in that work. Come to Safari West to meet our amazing animals and more often than not, their amazing offspring.