Armoured Predators (Crocodiles – Facts & scary Stats)

*Crocodiles are reptiles

*Reptiles cannot heat up their bodies from the inside like birds or mammals; rather they heat up their bodies with the rays of the sun.

* Crocodiles have 66 teeth. Each can be replaced many times over during the crocodiles lifetime.

*Crocodiles bodies are covered with an armour of bony scales that protect them from other predator’s (mostly other Crocodiles)

*Crocodiles eyes, ears and nostrils are located at the top of their heads so that they can lurk beneath the water and creep up on their prey.

*On land Crocodiles are quite slow, but beware, they can travel in spurts of up to 20km an hour.

*Stones can be found in the stomachs of crocodiles to help them grind food. These stones also act like the ballast in a ship to help the crocodile maintain its position under water.

*Female Crocodiles make a nest on the ground of decaying vegetation or sand and lay up to 60 eggs at a time.

Most Crocodile attacks on humans are on swimmers at night; Don’t swim in a Crocodile habitat.

*The muscles to open the Crocodiles jaw are very weak, but they have great power in snapping shut- up to 3 tonnes per square inch.

We have both species of Australian Crocodiles here at the Wildlife Habitat; the Estuarine (or salty) Crocodile and the Freshwater (or freshy) Crocodile.

They are out and about every day often sunning themselves on the lawn.

Check out Babinda our 4 metre male salty, he has his mouth wide open, what do you think Babinda is doing ????

September we welcomed our new arrivals which have settled in quite well, Punky and Felix. Punky and Felix are our new Tiger Quolls which where flown up from Ballarat Wildlife Park from the cold southern winter to the tropical northern summer but have settled in nicely. The wildlife staff worked hard creating a full restoration on the quoll exhibit within days prior to their arrival, working into the night. The plan is to continue to breed with this established pair, although the plan is to send Felix down to the Cairns Wildlife Dome, he will have to come up for “special visits” throughout next winter and hope they bless us with joeys for next season.

Australia’s Wildlife Habitat.
Mulching day.

Well our Koala’s need fresh food and plenty of it.
We grow about 3000 eucalypt trees on site for them that keeps the maintenance team busy. Weeding, fertilizing and mulching these plantations is a full time job. On Monday as part of our environmental policy and procedures and green team initiative all the Team at the Habitat, including our indigenous trainee’s, enjoyed 2 hrs. in the plantation helping the maintenance crew. It was hot , hard and sweaty but as a group we moved about 40 meters of mulch ( 4 large truck loads).But wait there is more and we only have about 200 more meters to go.
Maybe the team will tackle those piles next month when the muscles recover. Great work everybody.
If you have any question , please email me at gm@wildlifehabitat.com.au or go to our facebook page.

Garry Sullivan
GM
Wildlife Habitat Port Douglas.

Travellers Palms at the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary
As you walk into the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary’s front gates, you can’t help but see our magnificent stand of Travellers’ Palms. These palms earn their name, not because, as a lot of people think, they spread out, rather, they provided water to travelers in need, fresh water at that. You can find stores of water in the leaf folds, in the flower bracts and inside each of the hollow leaf bases.

I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve seen photographing this stand over the years.

Since April this year the Cairns Wildlife Dome and partnering zoo, Rainforestation have been participating in the Wildlife Volunteer program.  Our other partnering zoo, Wildlife Habitat has been participating in this program for about 2 years already.  So far it has been a huge success with very positive feedback from the volunteers.

They participate in a large variety of tasks including helping with shows, handling animals, cleaning enclosures, food preparations and much more.  Not only do they help us with our day to day tasks but also a variety of events that the Dome take part in and also construction with the many changes we are making around the Dome.

We have had a fantastic run of volunteers passing through, making many friends and learning so many different cultures and languages, and they have taught us as much as we have taught them.  There is a number of ways of which they wish to stay within each zoo.  We have a 4, 6 and 8 week program, where they stay between 1-2 weeks with us, 1-2 weeks with
Rainforestation and 2-4 weeks with Wildlife Habitat.

Asking 2 of our volunteers for feedback this is what we received:

VICTOR:
My time at the Dome was great; the staff were all very friendly; I got along with everyone there.  We got to try many different tasks and handling all the different animals in shows, enclosures and it was awesome. The overall stay at the Dome was great!

SASJA:
I enjoyed my time at the Dome, people were all very nice and it had a chilled atmosphere there was no bossing around. We got to help a lot with the animals doing shows and even assisting with sick or injured animals.  They allowed us to take part in as many different tasks as possible.  No day had been the same.

Recently the Cairns Wildlife Dome participated in the ‘Threatened Species’ day at the Botanic Gardens. The Cairns Wildlife Dome, and our partner zoo; The Wildlife Habitat stood along side our competitors; Cairns Tropical Zoo and Hartleys Creek Crocodile Farm to raise a very important awareness of our very rare and endangered animals that are unfortunately disappearing rapidly.

Despite the constant rain, the event turned out to be very successful and many people flowed through observing the variety of animals the zoos had on display.  We kept our rare and endangered animals at their zoos, and on display we had non threatened reptiles and insects instead.

Here at the Dome, we brought down two lizards (an Eastern Water Dragon and a Blue Tongue Lizard) as well as two turtles (a Maquories River Turtle & a Krefts River Turtle).  The Wildlife Habitat brought down from Port Douglas a Coastal Carpet Python and a very friendly Eclectus Parrot.  Cairns Tropical Zoo and Hartleys Creek Crocodile Farm teamed together and brought down some Gouldian Finches, a Crested Iguana, a Mulga, Stick Insects, an Australian Tarantula and a Rough Scaled Python.

Many questions were received and answered and we raised a much needed awareness for the animals of Australia.  It was fantastic to see so many people showing an interest and committing themselves to help.  Overall it was a fantastic day and achieved exactly what was set out to do.

Australia’s Wildlife Habitat. Wabal Wabal (meaning Butterfly) Dancers

 

The interaction between our Indigenous Trainee’s, International Wildlife Volunteers, Habitat Team members, visitors and animals is an amazing thing. This blog and movie is all about cross cultural contact between all the above and has come together via our involvement in the  ready to work program co-hosted by the Careers Training Centre, the Mossman Gorge Project and our International Wildlife Volunteer program.

For the past 7 months we have had the pleasure and privilege to assist in the training of 12 local aboriginals from the local Kuku Yalanji community who call the Mossman region their home. The aim is to get them ready to work when the Mossman Gorge Visitors Centre opens; quite frankly we don’t want them to leave as they are all valuable team members here at the Habitat. As well as the Indigenous trainees, we host up to 10 international wildlife volunteers at one time; they call the Wildlife Habitat and Port Douglas home for up to 8 weeks at a time.

It all came together when we hosted the Mossman Gorge Manjal Dimbi Wabal Wabal dancers who performed for all of us, this experience was beneficial to the young dancers as well because they spent time in the Wildlife
Habitat after the performance studying the animals and their movements for future choreography. They also feasted on our Lunch with the Lorikeet buffet.

The dancers could become regular show stoppers at the Habitat as cultural and community contact develops between us and the Mossman Gorge community, it’s something we are all proud of.

Garry Sullivan
General Manager
Wildlife Habitat

One of our main aims here at the Wildlife Habitat in Port Douglas is “Conservation through Education and appreciation”.  We do this in many ways but our successful Wildlife Volunteer Program is a main player.

How does an operation that keeps animals in captivity do this you may ask?
The main answer would be exposure and interaction; we give people from all walks of life  the opportunity to see, get close to and learn about animals. On many occasions, our visitors did not know even most of these animals even existed .

This letter below from one of our recent volunteers is testament to our aim of Conservation through Education and Appreciation:

Friday 6^th October 2011

To all of the beautiful staff at the Wildlife Habitat.

I have enclose a Russell Hobbs Four Slice Toaster that I overheard may be useful for breakfast time . More importantly is the new stick blender for the Echidna food preparation. I  wanted to communicate how overwhelmingly appreciative Paris and I are of your continuous and enthusiastic support during our stay. The experience was a marvellous eye-opener encouraging us to get more involved in Wildlife and Conservation. (You may find us loitering about your abode in a few months) Hope everything is going superbly!
I’m curious how Michelle is going with the Red Kangaroo joey, Sain with the female Double eyed Fig Parrot, the Tree Kangaroo’s and so much more.

Again thanks for the extraordinary  time. Your dedication is admirable and we both are eager to stay in contact.

Kara Dawson.

If you look closely at the photo they have some honey, a plastic piece of pipe covered on one end with bark and leaves, some witchetty grubs and a camera ( still in the van).

Talk about the best job in the world, I thought I had it until I met these two German film makers at the Wildlife Habitat last night at dusk. They are here to film our Striped Possums (Dactylopsila trivirgata), that are part of our captive breeding program.

The aim is to put the plastic pipe (with a witchetty grub inside it) over the camera lens and place some honey on top off the leaves/bark that covers the end of the pipe. This is all placed in the enclosure in an attempt to see if the possums will come and pull apart the leaves/bark to get the grub and have the camera rolling whilst this all happens. How cool !!!

This doco will be shown on German TV and National Geographic as part of a 4 series program on Australia’s unique Wildlife Habitats.
They have been out in the Daintree Rainforest filming our little furry friends but due to the shy and after dark lifestyle of the Striped Possum, the Wildlife Habitat in Port Douglas was the logical place for some up close footage.

Our breeding programs include the Black Necked Stork (worlds only breeding pair in captivity), Mahogany Glider, Striped Possum, Boyd’s Forest Dragon and Lumholtz’s Tree Kangaroo, who attract researchers and film crews from all over the world.
It’s a side of the Habitat people rarely see and it helps us in our efforts to educate people about wildlife and conservation awareness across the globe.

PS my job as GM is still the best job in the world.

Garry Sullivan
General Manager
Wildlife Habitat Port Douglas.
gm@wildlifehabitat.com.au.