Taigan Safari Park, Safari park in Bilohirsk Raion, Russia
Taigan Safari Park is a wildlife park in Bilohirsk Raion featuring open enclosures for large mammals on former military land. The grounds sit on a hillside above Taigan Reservoir and include separate zones for different predator species and primates.
In 2006 Oleg Zubkov, already owner of the Yalta zoo Fairy Tale, bought property on the grounds of a former military communications institute and began building the park, which opened to visitors in 2012. Part of the military equipment left on the site was incorporated into the exhibits. The park closed in December 2015 amid a conflict with the Crimean authorities and reopened in April 2016.
The name Taigan comes from the nearby reservoir and reflects the connection between the grounds and local geography. Visitors can watch feeding sessions and see how animal groups interact with handlers who have cared for them for years.
Visitors move around the park on electric cars and cycle rickshaws; private cars are not allowed inside. The grounds cover 32 hectares, about 20 of them given to the lion safari zone, with the rest holding the stationary zoo and a children's contact zoo. The park lies by the Taigan Reservoir in the Crimean foothills near Belogorsk.
The park occupies the grounds of a former military communications institute, and some abandoned equipment left behind was incorporated into the displays. Taigan is also the only park in Europe holding South African white lions and white Bengal tigers at the same time, plus roughly a tenth of the wild Amur tiger population.
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