Garret FitzGerald was Taoiseach, Shergar was kidnapped, Michael Jackson’s Thriller went to No 1 in the US charts, Gerry Adams was elected MP for West Belfast, the last episode of M.A.S.H was broadcast and deep in the heart of east Cork, Fota Wildlife Park opened to the public.
Forty years ago this weekend, UCC vice-president Tom Raftery saw his vision of a wildlife park on the grounds of Fota Island become a reality when it opened its gates to the first of almost 12 million visitors who have since visited.
Fota had been the home of the Smith Barry family for almost 800 years until UCC acquired it in 1975 and when the then director of Dublin Zoo, Terry Murphy, suggested the establishment of a wildlife park in Ireland, Prof Raftery was quick off the mark to propose Fota as a location.
Speaking to RTÉ prior to the opening of the near 30-hectare park, Prof Raftery said that Fota would be the first wildlife park on the island of Ireland and would place particular emphasis on the breeding and conservation of endangered species as part of an international programme.
“It’s going to be quite different to the Dublin Zoo – in area, it will be around two and a half times the size of Dublin Zoo and the range of animals will be roughly the same with some more exotic animals, endangered species which we will be breeding at Fota,” he said at the time.
Opening in 1983, Fota Wildlife Park attracted 101,261 visitors in its first year but since then numbers have grown consistently, up to 474,792 in 2021 with about 60pc of visitors coming from Munster while the park is estimated to be worth €70 million annually to the local economy.
Park director Sean McKeown says, like the majority of licensed not-for-profit zoological organisations, Fota does not own the animals that are bred there but manages them under the European Endangered Species Programme operated by the European Association of Zoos.
“This means that animals may be transferred between countries and zoos.”
Mr McKeown says when Fota first opened they had 33 species and a total of 172 animals, and today the wildlife park is home to 108 species and 1,080 animals. “Over the last 40 years, 7,914 different animals have called Fota Wildlife Park their home for some period of their life.”
Now covering some 40 hectares, Fota is famous for its cheetah breeding programme with over 240 cubs being born at the park, including four born just four months ago, but it has also had success with other species breeding some 72 Rothschild’s giraffes and 60 European bison.
“We have developed an expertise in breeding cheetahs successfully here in Fota but we also have had success with other newer species to the park such as the Sumatran tiger and the Asian lion and the Indian rhino – last year we celebrated the birth of the only Indian rhino ever born in Ireland.”
Mr McKeown says Sumatran tigers are the rarest subspecies in the world but Fota’s breeding pair Dourga and Denar have had two cubs who have since gone on to take part in European breeding programmes in other zoos while Fota has also produced two sets of litters from its Asian lions group.
“There are now only 500 Asian lions living in the wild so the co-operative breeding programmes that zoos and wildlife parks do, such as the birth of the cubs at Fota, is an essential safeguard against a severe decline to the wild population, which may be vulnerable to disease or natural disaster.”
He says Fota also has a very good breeding recording for many primate species such as ring-tailed lemurs, black and white ruffed lemurs, lion-tailed macaques, agile gibbons, Siamang gibbons and Colombian black spider monkeys, all of which are endangered or critically endangered in the wild.
Mr McKeown said Rothschild’s giraffes along with zebras and cheetahs were among the first species of animals to come to Fota Wildlife Park and it was apt as Fota celebrates its 40th anniversary that its most recent arrival was a baby Rothschild’s giraffe.
“The new baby giraffe can trace her lineage in Cork back to 1982 when her great-great-grandmother Frisky came to Fota from Southampton and was one of the founding herd members and her great grandmother, her grandmother and her mother were all born here so we’re very proud of her.”
