Awful. It's upsetting to read and especially upsetting given the history of the place.
Wildwood's first two wolves were Luna and Apollo, who'd been imported by us (i.e. the UKWCT) in the late 90s. We bred them and kept three of the four pups, the fourth went to Paradise Wildlife Park (where despite assurances they kept her on her own, she "went mad" and was put down).
Wildwood let Apollo and Luna breed, and just left their pups to it - they ended up having either sibling or parent/offspring matings, and at one point had something like 15 wolves in their one acre enclosure. Soon after they sent most of the wolves off to Wolf Watch UK (a rescue centre), but they ballsed up the tranquiliser for the journey and - upon arrival - the now frantic wolves ended up being put down.
Apollo and Luna were kept by Wildwood (Luna was on their posters and PR material) and they had two further pups - Nadja and Mischka. These two ended up being hand-reared (as their den flooded) and they ended up like our wolves - socialised. However unlike ours the original handlers/keepers left, and the newcomers were scared of the wolves and didn't build a bond with them (our two remaining wolves still have around a dozen core volunteers looking after them). Unfortunately socialised wolves do badly without human contact and enrichment, and by the end of their lives they were reduced to pacing figure-of-8 patterns in their small enclosure, heartbreaking. (They did snap out of it when I went there, oddly enough, but I made sure to carry some fur from our European wolves in my pocket - siblings to Nadja and Mischka).
Once the wolves from UKWCT lines died out they imported some from Scandinavia, and they're the ones they have - or had - today. It seems their husbandry practices still aren't good, as it's simply inexcusable to let things escalate that much! We had issues at times with our wolves and ended up having to split a pack up, and once that'd been done they became different animals entirely, much calmer. In Wildwood's case they should have offered the three youngsters to another zoo, and I'm surprised Wolf Watch didn't step in (although bearing in mind what happened in the early 2000s, perhaps they didn't fancy that again!) The two parents would have been fine, and they could have done what we did with our wolves: vasectomy for the male or an ovary-sparing spay for the female - no pups, no change in behaviour or scent. Instead they took the easy option and killed them all.
Mind you, other UK zoos have form here too. As a couple of examples, the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig claimed similar issued several years back and put down their entire pack, but the rumours were they didn't want untrendy North American wolves any more... European wolves were brought in and funnily enough didn't have any issues.
And Dartmoor Zoo put down their wolf pups each year, in September, after using them to draw in kids during the summer holidays (and sell toys etc). They did it in 2004 and 2005, but luckily in 2006 they were under threat of going bust and we were able to take three pups from them - sadly one died soon after (Mika, she didn't get enough colostrum apparently), but Mosi and Mai lived on for another 12 or more years.
(EDIT: And it goes without saying that most of this isn't public knowledge. There's a lot that goes on which is kept "hush hush"!)
Edited by user
27 March 2026 16:47:14
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