Qualla: Fota Wildlife Park https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Fota Wildlife Park https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park Fota Wildlife Park: Introduction https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park/ Photo credit Talks Presenters 09 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk through the gate at Fota and within a few minutes a ring-tailed lemur will probably stroll past your boots. The lemurs are not contained - they live on free-roaming islands and casually cross paths with visitors. So do the kangaroos and the maras. The giraffes browse mature grassland that stretches for hectares before any fence appears. Only the predators - the cheetahs, the Sumatran tigers, the Asiatic lions - are kept in enclosed habitats, for reasons that need no explanation. Opened in July 1983 by then-President Patrick Hillery, Fota Wildlife Park is Ireland's only zoo of any size outside Dublin, and it has spent more than forty years experimenting with what a zoo can be when the cages are mostly invisible.

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Image: Talks Presenters 09 (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/gc4p-fota-wildlife-park-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Fota Wildlife Park: The Idea, the Land, the Money https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park/ Photo credit Gareth James, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the late 1970s Dublin Zoo had reached the limit of what it could do on its existing site. In 1979 the director proposed something new - a wildlife park, somewhere with land. University College, Cork had just acquired the Fota estate from Dorothy Bell, the last of the Smith-Bar...

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Image: Gareth James | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/gc4p-fota-wildlife-park-the-idea-the-land-the-money.mp3 0:06 2 full Fota Wildlife Park: Why the Giraffes Have Room https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park/ Photo credit Talks Presenters 09 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The defining design choice at Fota was to let most animals roam. The African Savannah paddock alone covers a substantial fraction of the park's hundred acres - ostriches, Grant's zebras, scimitar-horned oryx and Rothschild's giraffes share mature grassland with no internal fences...

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Image: Talks Presenters 09 (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/gc4p-fota-wildlife-park-why-the-giraffes-have-room.mp3 0:06 3 full Fota Wildlife Park: Breeding for Endangered Species https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park/ Photo credit Talks Presenters 09 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Many of Fota's residents are species under threat of extinction. The park runs the European Endangered Species Programme for the Sudan cheetah and the European Studbook for the Kafue lechwe and the Red lechwe. Animals bred at Fota travel to other zoos across Europe as part of car...

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Image: Talks Presenters 09 (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/gc4p-fota-wildlife-park-breeding-for-endangered-species.mp3 0:06 4 full Fota Wildlife Park: A Documentary, an Award, a Million Visitors https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park/ Photo credit Brian0918, CC BY-SA 2.5. Fota's 30th anniversary in 2013 prompted the Tropical House and Asian Sanctuary expansions. In November 2016 the park won the Customer Experience Insights (CXi) Experience Destination of the Year award. It has repeatedly taken Best Family Day Out for Munster and Cork, and it was ...

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Image: Brian0918 | CC BY-SA 2.5

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/gc4p-fota-wildlife-park-a-documentary-an-award-a-million-visitors.mp3 0:06 5 full Fota Wildlife Park: Sea Eagles and Spider Monkeys https://qualla.com/fota-wildlife-park/ Photo credit Talks Presenters 09 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk the whole park and you encounter the kind of diversity that turns a child quiet. The Monkey Island wetlands have black howlers, Colombian spider monkeys, Siamang gibbons and lemurs, with penguins, Chilean flamingos and great white pelicans patrolling the water. The Asian San...

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Image: Talks Presenters 09 (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/p/fota-wildlife-park-wp/gc4p-fota-wildlife-park-sea-eagles-and-spider-monkeys.mp3 0:06 6 full