A visit to Ballarat's Tiger Sanctuary these school holidays is a must.
Coinciding with the return of the super cozy (and family-friendly) Ballarat Winter Festival, the Ballarat Wildlife Park has welcomed a new member to the family in Kai the Sumatran-Siberian Tiger.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around the region here.
While Ballarat transforms into a winter wonderland with a myriad of experiences to warm your heart, soul and belly for the next couple of weeks, Kai’s arrival is certainly a highlight of the festival, being Australia’s tallest tiger and weighing 164 kg.
Kai is a Sumatran-Siberian Tiger who arrived from Dreamworld and is a very sociable tiger. Sumatran Tigers are the smallest tiger species and are mainly solitary. They are known to become very protective over their territories, clawing and scent-marking trees are one way they warn rivals away.
Kai was born at the Gold Coast theme park back in 2015, weighing only 1.3 kilogram at the time, prior to World Tiger Day. At that point in time, Kai was the first cub born at the park for seven years.
He arrived at the Ballarat Wildlife Park earlier this month, and was welcomed with a heated den to make the transition to our colder state a bit more bearable.
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Kai will be joining Satu, the Ballarat Wildlife Park’s current big cat who arrived back in March of 2018. Satu weighs 120 kilograms, and came to Ballarat from Australia Zoo. He’s 13 years old and loves to eat almost anything! When he’s not eating, he’s usually snoozing in the sun or exploring the Tiger Sanctuary.
The Ballarat Wildlife Park’s Tiger Sanctuary features swimming pools, climbing poles, shady areas, heated dens and state-of-the-art security to ensure the tigers and the community are kept safe.
The Sumatran Tiger population is dropping rapidly due to human actions including clearing of their habitat for farming and palm oil plantations, as well as poaching them for sale on the black market. The Sumatran Tiger is the only surviving tiger population in the Sunda Islands, where the Bali and Javan Tigers are now extinct.
Ballarat Wildlife Park is supporting tiger conservation efforts via the Tiger Protection Conservation Units (TPCU). The TPCU are rangers known for disabling snares, following leads, solving tiger-human conflict and providing evidence for legal proceedings. Their continual work is contributing to saving the Sumatran tiger species. If you would like to support the TPCU, please get in contact with us.
To celebrate Kai’s arrival, as part of the winter festival, guests will be able to purchase a bowl of spicy Noodles to warm their insides whilst they enjoy meeting Kai and the other tigers. The open fire in the bushman’s hut will be blazing for all to warm up in-between seeing all the other animals the park has to offer.
To find out more, visit Ballarat Winter Festival. You can find out more about the Ballarat Wildlife Park here.
