A wildlife park has opened a new \u00a32.5 million enclosure \u2013 as it prepares to double in size within the next five years.<\/p>\n
Wingham Wildlife Park, on the A257 between Canterbury and Sandwich, unveiled the first phase of its multi-million-pound expansion this morning.<\/p>\n
Inside the new Kingdom of the Big Cats at Wingham Wildlife Park<\/p>\n
More than 100 visitors gathered to watch the ribbon-cutting, along with staff and mascots.<\/p>\n
The area includes the Kingdom of the Big Cats, which will house Asiatic lions and two tigers the park took on from the now-closed Sandwich Wildlife Park.<\/p>\n
Also included is a new tarantula and fish exhibit, as well as squirrel monkeys and agoutis \u2013 a rodent species native to the Americas.<\/p>\n
Park owner Tony Binskin, who took over the attraction 18-and-a-half years ago with wife Jackie, told KentOnline it was a great feeling to see their hard work paying off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you own a zoo, you’re working an endless amount of hours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tony Binskin took over Wingham Wildlife Park 18 years ago<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started with six people; now we’re 120 staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe park’s grown incredibly. The people have grown with us, from 21,000 to 450,000 [annual visitors] now, in 18 years, so it’s been a lot of hard work getting everything ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdding this bit is just the best thing ever. To see so many people come here to see what we’re doing is really exciting<\/p>\n
Park curator Markus Wilder said construction has been underway for about two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur plans are to be able to have breeding tigers and breeding lions and things like that; it’s been something that we’ve wanted for many, many years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Markus Wilder is the curator at Wingham Wildlife Park<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s opening signals the completion of the first part of Wingham\u2019s hugely ambitious expansion plans.<\/p>\n
Having opened 40 years ago as Wingham Bird Park before later rebranding, Tony hopes to see it double in size within the next five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it will take us probably another three to four years to be finished,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re doing it all a bit more fancy than we normally would.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project is expected to cost about \u00a35 million, and phase two is being kept a closely-guarded secret.<\/p>\n
Wingham Wildlife Park is now home to Kent’s only Asiatic lions
A tiger in her new enclosure at Wingham Wildlife Park<\/p>\n
However, pygmy hippo Haggis – who is hugely popular on social media – is expected to play a huge part in future exhibits.<\/p>\n
Her rivalry with Moo Deng – a TikTok-famous Thai pygmy born at about the same time – went viral and was even mentioned on Saturday Night Live in the USA.<\/p>\n
Phase two of Wingham’s expansion plans is underway<\/p>\n
So famous is Haggis, she had her own range of merchandise at Edinburgh Zoo before she moved to Kent last year.<\/p>\n
Since then, she has become a firm favourite at Wingham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A wildlife park has opened a new \u00a32.5 million enclosure \u2013 as it prepares to double in size…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[980,96,59,192,191,3864,194,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-705822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-canterbury","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-human-interest","tag-kent","tag-sandwich","tag-syndicate","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}