Life On Islands

Animal life on islands evolves in various ways as a result of isolation. Birds can become flightless, animals can assume much greater size than normal, or become smaller, and species evolve into numerous types to exploit different habitats and foods. In the modern world, life on islands share a less welcome attribute; most are threatened with extinction, unable to cope with changes people have brought to their previously isolated world. The Wildlife Park recognises its position on an island in the Irish Sea by exhibiting several endangered species in the Life on Islands exhibit - see lower down the page for some of them.

The Isle of Man - an intriguing island	Calf of Man
The Isle of Man has itself a unique animal and plant life, mainly those species which were able to colonise in the brief period between the end of the ice age and the return of normal sea levels. Consequently, there are few land mammals, and fewer reptiles, but some birds are surprisingly absent also, especially woodland species like jays and woodpeckers. The people of the island used timber for fuel and the Isle of Man was effectively deforested by the time of the Middle Ages leaving characteristic birds nowhere to live. The Isle of Man does have an endemic moth and is the site locality for the Manx robber fly and the Isle of Man cabbage.
	Its name is also reflected in the Manx shearwater, a bird which formerly nested on the Calf of Man in tens of thousands before the arrival of the brown rat - illustrating a further problem faced by island species, predation and competition from introduced species.

The Life on Islands exhibit has been designed to illustrate these principles. The main walkthrough aviary houses representative birds and mammals from islands around the world, with reptiles and invertebrates in specially designed exhibits. These species have been selected to show how animals arrive on islands and the evolutionary changes they undergo in isolation. The next two enclosures are devoted to single groups of animals, flying foxes and lemurs, with ring-tailed lemur, brown-fronted lemur and black and white ruffed lemur, showing the need to conserve many island species - which increasingly only survive on virtual 'habitat islands' in a landscape fashioned by people for their own needs.

some of our animals on view in Life on Islands:-

Bali Starling	Rodrigues Fruit Bat
	Rodrigues Island Fruit Bat
only a handful exist in the wild. Reintroductions	Once very rare, captive breeding and reintroduction
have been tried but birds have been poached	by the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust has restored
for the pet trade by the very guards employed	bats to the forests of the island of Rodrigues
to look after them.	in the Indian Ocean.
Red-fronted lemur	Ring-tailed lemur
found in the canopy of deciduous forests of western and eastern Madagascar, this is one of five sub-species of brown lemur. Clearance of the forests where it lives is threatening its survival in the wild.	the commonest of the lemurs of Madagascar, the ring-tailed lemur is found in the south of the island. It is nevertheless threatened by continuing habitat loss due to fires, over-grazing and charcoal production.
Other species on view include Mediterranean tortoises, Cuban boas, Meller's ducks, Madagascar teal, Hawaiian geese, Gough Island rail, Desmarest's hutia and Palawan peacock pheasant.	Interpretation panels explain the biogegography of islands, using the living animals as examples - how animals get to islands, how many species live on islands, how new species evolve on islands and how people now endanger many island species and what we can do about it.

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