Park aims high with plans to house giraffe family

Staff at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park at Branton, near Doncaster, said they were planning to bring a family of the long-necked African mammals to South Yorkshire when the project is complete in the autumn.

Yesterday a spokesman said: “We will be revealing full details of Yorkshire Wildlife Park’s exciting new arrivals, which are due in October.

“They will join the growing family at the attraction which brings people in touch with some of the world’s most beautiful – and at- risk – species.”

Earlier this year the park opened a new enclosure for the threatened Amur leopard, which is one of the most endangered big cats in the world.

Just 30 Amur leopards are left in the wild, and the Yorkshire Wildlife Park spent £300,000 on the enclosure, which has been named Leopard Heights and includes a nine-metre high climbing frame for the animals.

In February keepers at the park also released Amur tigers Sayan and Vladimir who had been living in neighbouring enclosures for months before being formally introduced.

The park has been developed over several years from an attraction which was known as Brockholes Farm, and now also includes exotic animals like camels, monkeys and meerkats.

The first major coup for the park was the arrival of a family of lions which were the focus of a rescue effort from Oradea Zoo in Romania, where they were being kept in inhumane conditions.

A national fund-raising campaign had been mounted to rescue him and 12 other lions, and they were flown into Doncaster’s Robin Hood Airport in 2010.

In June, the eldest of the group, a 30-year-old animal called Johnny Senior by staff, died, but the rest of his family are now the park’s main attraction.