The Pairi Daiza wildlife park has recently become home to two small Tasmanian Devils, Cradle and Cradoc, from Denmark. You can visit them when the park opens on 1st April. Denmark and now Belgium are the only European countries to have the opportunity to accommodate the endangered species.
Cradle and Cradoc have a brand-new enclosure of over 400 m2, created in Pairi Daiza's Australian world, "Mura Mura". The park said it is "particularly honoured to have been chosen by the bosses of Copenhagen Zoo (Denmark) to accommodate these first Tasmanian Devils".
In 2004, Australia presented the Devils to Denmark as a gift to mark the birth of the first child of the royal couple, Frederik of Denmark and his wife Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, originally from Tasmania. The brothers Cradle and Cradoc, who arrived at Pairi Daiza on Wednesday morning, are some of the progeny of these "royal Devils".
A gift from Australia despite the ban on their export outside Tasmania. The Tasmanian Devil, the last living carnivorous marsupial, is an endangered species. It lives exclusively on the island of Tasmania.
Due to the decline in the number of specimens observed in the wild and despite its protected status, since 2008, it has appeared on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list as a species in danger of extinction. On Tasmania, its fragmented population is believed to be between 20,000 and 75,000 animals. A number which has fallen significantly following the appearance of a disease identified in 1996 (Devil Facial Tumour Disease) which, alone, has decimated half the population of these marsupials.
