{"id":536130,"date":"2026-03-12T19:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T19:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/536130\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T19:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T19:03:07","slug":"endangered-lion-cubs-and-young-rhino-to-leave-fota-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/536130\/","title":{"rendered":"Endangered lion cubs and young rhino to leave Fota park"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three Asiatic lion cubs born in Fota Wildlife Park are to leave their east Cork home for Wingham Wildlife Park in Canterbury in the UK, with visitors here having a final opportunity to see them over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

The trio of male cubs were born to mother Arya and father Yali in June 2024 as part of on-going efforts at Fota to save the endangered species.<\/p>\n

The three were named Theo, Rakesh and Thor following an invitation to the public to help name them.<\/p>\n

The Asiatic lion is a distinct subspecies from African lions, with Fota Wildlife Park playing a key role in the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria Ex-situ Programme (EEP), which is a population management programme for over 500 animal species, coordinated by experts.<\/p>\n

The three lion cubs will leave for the EEP programme at the Wingham Wildlife Park.<\/p>\n

It is estimated between 500 and 600 individual Asiatic lions remain in the wild in India’s Gir Forest.<\/p>\n

Fota will also bid farewell to Jai, the only Indian rhino ever born in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\"Jai,
\nJai, the only Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) ever born in Ireland will move to Edinburgh Zoo<\/p>\n

He was one of only six Indian rhino births in any zoological institution in the world that year.<\/p>\n

He is moving to Edinburgh Zoo as part of the species’ EEP.<\/p>\n

Jai was born in September 2022 to Maya and Jamil after a gestation period of 16 months.<\/p>\n

The species is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with some 3,300 animals remaining in the wild across India and Nepal.<\/p>\n

International breeding programmes involving Fota Wildlife Park, a wildlife conservation charity, in coordination with zoos across Europe and the UK help maintain genetically healthy populations of endangered species and support long term global wildlife conservation efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three Asiatic lion cubs born in Fota Wildlife Park are to leave their east Cork home for Wingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-536130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}