Tiger playtime

BALLARAT Wildlife Park staff and tiger Kai celebrated Global Tiger Day on Monday, 29 July.

At 11am, Kai was given an extra special enrichment toy; a papier mache ball made by Haddon Primary School pupils.

The ball was covered in different scents and hung up high, enouraging Kai to pull it down and play.

The children gifted the ball to Kai for his 9th birthday on 25 July.

“Global Tiger Day is an opportunity to raise awareness of tiger conservation and how important it is,” said park operations manager Jared Mulholland.

“Every tiger subspecies is either endangered or critically endangered, and us as humans have been the brunt of that, so it’s our job to help create that awareness and turn it around.

“In the last 100 years, wild tiger numbers have dropped from over 100,000 to less than 4000, but there’s been good news in that they have done some recent observations and numbers have started to rise.

“A few different subspecies have started to rise up, so about 4500 now is the estimated wild tiger numbers, which is fantastic.

“Both Kai and his sister Akasha are great ambassadors and educators for their species at Ballarat Wildlife Park.”

The tiger siblings were hand-raised by humans at Dreamworld in Queensland, and Mr Mulholland said they continue to enjoy being around people.

“Because visitors can see them up close, they can gain an important attachment, and be educated,” he said.

“We do public presentations every day, and we’re the only place in Victoria that do tiger encounters where people get to feed our tigers.

“Through the cost of the encounters, we are able to raise funds to go towards WildCats Conservation Alliance.”