Giant African snails and a green Mamba are newest residents at reptile zoo in Kilkenny

The National Reptile Zoo in Kilkenny is busy getting to know their newest residents - four giant African snails and a green mamba.

Visitors to the zoo may also be able to get up close and personal with the new arrivals during the Animal Encounters sessions, which takes place hourly each day from 10.30am.

“At The National Reptile Zoo we believe that the only way to really appreciate some of these magnificent animals is to meet them personally; and we’ll give you the chance to do just that!
“We hold animal encounter sessions everyday, usually every hour during our busier times and less frequently at other times. But we will ensure that everyone gets the chance to hold or touch some of our scaly friends!

“All of our animals are ‘ambassadors for their species’ and this means that they are housed here to allow you to better understand the plight of some of these animals in the wild, and how important they are to our ecosystem,” said zoo manager James Hennessy.

Another new initiative has recently been launched at the zoo, which is located in the Hebron Industrial Estate is the Focus On series.

“We have launched our Focus On series, where we have a new set topic that our talks and encounters cover in more detail. The topic changes each month, so for instance the Focus for August is all about the senses. This allows us to give some more specific details about certain topics when people visit the zoo, and we try to keep everything centred around our animals, where they live and how we can work better toward conservation.”

In terms of exploration, James went on a trip to Uganda in December to lend some assistance at Kuvamba Zoo, as well as visiting Katwe village on the shores of Lake Edward to help build a crocodile free zone to allow the locals to fish and use the lakeshore safely. Efforts in Uganda are ongoing and some of the zoo’s conservation donations for this year will be going toward furthering those efforts!

As part of their commitment to conservation, The National Reptile Zoo currently supports many projects which directly contribute to the conservation of species and habitats in the wild.

These projects include Indigo Expeditions in Guatemala which surveys the remote rainforest surrounding the Estación Biológica las Guacamayas. The project is now expanding to include surveys on the Central American River Turtle and the Morelet’s Crocodile.

The National Reptile Zoo also supports the conservation work carried out by Green Anaconda Research, Venezuela. The project aims to learn the basic aspects of the anaconda’s biology in order to create guidelines for its protection and possible management. The research carried out also reaches to captive anacondas, including those at the National Reptile Village.
For more information or to donate to any of the conservation projects go to nationalreptilezoo.ie