«J. M iidalllull till. A RE l’l{lVATE ZOOS SAFE? LYNN BARBER visits some of Britain’s fiililffig ‘§}‘$'}iid Aspinall’s, where 12-year-old Robin Birley was mauled by a tiger on E asterM0nday as .'.'.'Ht .."mtt1‘lti‘rliW‘ « " -- john Aspinall is anxious to demon- strate the size of his male Siherian tiger. Not that anyone is helittling it for a moment: the knot ofspeetators gathered outside the cage are allquite ready to sign afiidavits. il‘necessai'_\t. that the tiger is the liiggest th y‘ have ever seen. But Mr Aspinall maintains you cannot‘ judge the size of a tiger when it is merely prowling around, and he is goitig to make this one stretch to its full height on it: iind legs. \/Vorse, Mr Asptnall plans to get untt't'27It’t1Ilr the tiger to give a human sea - oli comparison. We all hold our l)reaths. Mr Aspinall e ters the cage alone, unlocking and reloeking the com- plicated series of safety doors. The male tiger and his almost equally large mate prowl curiously round him. knt ing him occ sionally with their vast Hanks. A keeper has meanwhile appeared with a hunk of liloody meat, halfa carcase, at the, end ofa long pole. At a signal from Mr Aspinall, the keeper holds the pole up against the outside of the cage. so that the meat rests on the t<)pd):tt's. Aspinall walks toward it, liollowed hy both tigers. The male sees the meat hut is wary - this is an odd way of feeding — and stiiffs curi- ously at Mr /\spinall. But at last he realises that the food is there for the taking, if he jumps. Ile e s the meat. measur -s distance. paces hack and for- ward are ' , and at last with a colossal spring leaps tip to snatch it. /\s the tiger poises in mid-air, Mr Aspinall steps Forward and, fora camera-shutter hlink. is caught under the tiger’ out- stretched he Beam of sati. from /\spinal . gasps of relief from the spectators. john /\spinall, former member of the M . r set. organiser of private gaming parties. and now owner ofthe (Ilermont (Ilul). keeps I4 tigers, along with gorillas. wolves, hoar. deer and hison on his 50-aere estate at How- letts near (Ianterhury. His private zoo is by far the ltttrgest and most opulent _ hut it is not the only one closed to the puhlie. ’l‘here is no way ofknowing exactly how many private zoos exist. l‘)ecause they do not have to he registere . but the l{SP(,IA lielieves that the num- her is growit ‘ '\otic animals are now cheap and e: tly ()l)I:lln2ll)lC: local pet shops quite commonly stock monkeys or alligators or hush-l)al)ies at less than L270 a head. and specialised importers like Ravensden at Bedford offer higget‘ gaine “off the peg". Thus private 7.‘oo- owning is no longer the prerogative of the very rich. and the RS PC/\’s night- mare oi‘ “tigers in every suliurlian liztcltgatrtleif’ is increasingly plausible. How safe, in fact, are the private zoos? ()n liaster Monday I2-year-old _ Robin Birley, son of Mr Mark Birley, owner of the London nightclub Anna- liels, was mauled hya tiger. at MrAspin- all's zoo. And last Septcmbera 19-year- old model was also mauled at Hovvletts. 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I \\';1\;1|tno.xt tt1\'()l\v'<’(! in one t11yscll'\\'l1L't1 I \'i.situi :1 pI‘t\';tI(‘ cnllccttmt ;1t SlL';lf()l‘d. l.tt1cs, |)1'|o|1g— ing to +()v-_vc:1t'—<>ld Jutncx l)c:1n. wlm is hhml. Ilc \\'.‘l|t1'(‘(t IHL‘ to mcvt the 1>ri_1h- 111- hi». C()H('C(tUI1, .1 h;thr><>t1c;tHnl B;th.'1, .1111] I11‘ ;1x.\1tt‘L'1{ Inc xhv w;1.\ (h)L'tl('. She liu-.~ in :1 l;11‘gt.x|1 «mt thmr utgc 1x-:1chcd via .1 s;1tc1'_v utgc. M1‘ [)1-:1t1 Llllhtfhvll the nut:-1' (hN)I‘. c\c<1rt‘c1l IHC into thv \.1tc1}' 1‘:ts1<'.;1t11i th1~n upcttul thc mncr 1111111‘ 11> h‘I ’»;1h;1 twin us. She <‘;1n11.' [hI‘()U:1h. Mr D1-;tn shut the 1111101‘ thmt‘ huhtntt her .1111I t‘1‘Im‘L1‘1| thc HHICI‘ thmr M1 rh.1t \\'(' \*.‘<'t'<' .1” |U1'h_k‘si i<1::1‘thL'1‘ tit thv WLES plans to open a wildlife park at his home near Winchester. Until Whip.»-nad(=-style enclosures are built for them his zebras live in corral.» TWO African wild cats are aeherzshed immigrant quota in the Dangerfield 200 small cage. I stroked Baba and all went well initially. until suddenly she took offence and leaptat my hair. I screamed but Mr Dean, being blind, could not see what was going on and I spent some terrified minutes with Baba perched on my back, batting at my face and clawing my hair. Eventually Mr Dean was able to pull Baba away. But she was still making lunges at my head and I was no nearer getting out of the ( \cage. Trying to keep hysteria down, I asked Mr Dean to let me have the ‘outer door key so that I could let myself out. He handed me a keyring of about ‘I00 almost identical keys. At. last I found the right key and escaped. but I resolved never to try friendship with a baboon again. 'Mr Aspinall, in" his 11‘ years at Howletts, has had a fair number of l escapes. and recently there were the more serious mishaps when the model and Robin ~Birley were mauled. Mr Aspinall considers escapes an occup- ational hazard, and says he has fewer than, say, Whipsnade. His last one was :1 wolf which got out when the earth subsided under its cage, leaving a wolf-size tunnel. The local papers promptly set up a hue~and-cry, HUNGRY WOLF TERRORISES KENT VILLAGERS, and Mr Aspinall and his staff combed the neighbour- hood. The wolf. was loose for several days" but Mr Aspinall reports proudly than it did not attack any local chickens or livestock, let alone humans, and eventually came trotting back to Mr Aspinall’s whistle. Dangerfield disagrees with Aspinall about the inevitability of escapes. He maintains: “It need never happen. The sort of time it does happen is when you're trying to save money on a cage and you're hoping to get away with it l)ut you don’t. Now I cant replace an-animal very easily if I lose it — for instance, I've just got my first British red squirrel after 15 years, and if this one escaped I might have another I5 years to wait. If anything potentially dangerous got away one should definitely inform the police because, to be quite honest, if it really is :1 dicey thing, it ought to be shot on sight.” This actually happened at his first zoo when his dingo escaped. Daiigerfield was leading the dingo across the , . yard to its cage, the diniga-‘pulled on its lead. Dangerfield pulled to restrain it and the dingo leapt at his arm and tore it. The shock made‘ him drop the lead and the dingo trotted . off towards the open front gates. “There wasn’t time to hang around wondering whether he might or might not attack someone. He had injured me once before. The front gates were open, there were children outside, so Iigrabbed a gun and — Bang!" HIS is the unsentimental scien- tist talking, the side of Mr Dangerfield that prevails in running the zoo, but he admits weaker moments: “I suppose to some extent I am sentimental in that I will take in injured animals which I don’t need or want, and, for instance, I will trap and kill sparrows to feed my owls and falcons but if a child brings an injured sparrow to the front door we do all we can to save it. People think were mad, but I don’t know — I think one has this trust." Ilangerfield and Aspin-all both agree that captive breeding in zoos has an important_- part’ to play in natural preservation. Aspinall feels that the huge sum recently fetched by Stubbs’s painting of a cheetah at auction could better have been spent on pre- serving Cheetahs in the wild. Aspinall prefers the higher main- mals, the “lorcls of the jungle" which demand respect rather than pity, and he dates this attitude from his early childhood. “I was born in India. And I had an uncle who kept two tame tigers and two tame elephants. and he was my hero when I was a child — I always longed to be like . him. I thought that was one of the meanings of adulthood: to ‘make friends with the animals — not to own themas exhibits or some damn thing, but to have a relationship with them, to be able to say. ‘That great tiger is my friend.’ I suppose it came from reading Mowgli too, and Ernest Thompson Seton, my favourite author as a child. I really respect and love the animals, that’s what it’s all about." He carries this respect and love to almost mystical extremes: “I have told everyone here‘ that if I am killed by _an animal, the animal is not to be -shot on any account. I want to be buried with the animals ~ all animals that die here are buried at the end of the avenue and so is my daughter, who died when she was three months old. Except hoofed animals, which are given to the tigers. I want to build a mausoleum, maybe just a simple obelisk. I have 21 strong historical sense, you see —everything is so ephemeral, families die out, prosperity_vanishes. I would like to think that in l,000 years’ time, explorers will break through the undergrowth and see this obelisk and say: ‘My God, 1,000 years ago gorillas I lived here and a man and his wife- and his family!”