We’ll give Guinness the piglet and pals a new home (From Cotswold Journal)

We’ll give Guinness the piglet and pals a new home

8:00am Friday 18th May 2012 in News

ANIMALS left without a permanent home following the shock closure of an Evesham wildlife park have been taken in by a team determined to keep them in the Vale.

The Domestic Fowl Trust in Honeybourne reopened just a few weeks after the Ark Animal Sanctuary closed its doors in March and has already started rehoming many of the animals which had been placed in temporary accommodation across the country.

The trust has been taken over by Stratford-based All Things Rural but is being run by the former manager of the Ark, Dean Harrison.

Mr Harrison, who had been hoping to buy the sanctuary, located at the Evesham Country Park, said: “It was important to us to keep the animals in the area. There is not a lot in Evesham like this so we definitely wanted to keep it here.

“We were planning to buy the Ark in October, but then we discovered it was not included in [country park] development plans.”

It was at this point the owner of All Things Rural, Nigel Ford, came forward and asked Mr Harrison to manage the Domestic Fowl Trust.

Set in 30 acres of land off Station Road in Honeybourne, the trust re-opened on April 6, after being closed to the public for about a year. Creating suitable homes for many of the animals will take about three to four months and major development plans will be ongoing over the next three years.

“There are deer and rheas, which came from the Ark,”

said Mr Harrison, “as well as pigs, peacocks and loads more. We will get the reptiles from the Ark and some otters, meerkats, Scottish wildcat and foxes when we have a zoo licence.

“We will be changing the name to All Things Wild and are hoping the site will become a nature centre. We have just finished building the education room and there will be nature walks, dune building areas and wild meadows. So far we have had a good response. It is an exciting challenge.”