On Thursday, we had a visit from Tanith Brown who works at The Big Cat Sanctuary in Smarden. She came to School to finalise our preparations for the inaugural ‘Spots and Stripes’ fundraising day that is taking place at School on 21st May.  

The Big Cat Sanctuary was founded in 2000 and is home to around 50 wild cats, from the smallest in the world, the Sri Lankan Rusty Spotted Cat, to the largest, the Amur tiger. It is now recognised as a centre of excellence and is one of Europe’s biggest wild cat centres.

The Sanctuary is proud to be part of the European Endangered Species Breeding Programme, the body which regulates captive breeding and ensures a strong, diverse and healthy gene pool. Breeding successes so far at the Sanctuary include an Amur leopard and Amur tiger, a Sumatran tiger, a Serval cat, a Pallas cat and a snow leopard.

The Big Cat Sanctuary has four pillars of ethos: welfare, breeding, education and conservation. By using these guiding principles, they are helping to secure a future for both big cats and small cats, conserving and restoring the balance of our ecosystem in which these predators play a vital role.

As part of the A Level Biology course, members of the Lower Sixth will listen to a talk from Tanith about the threats to the cats in the wild, in situ and ex situ conservation and why we should conserve the cats. The Juniors will have a presentation about the Sanctuary’s conservation work and will take part in sponsored ‘sleeping lions’ fundraising game. Some academic departments will also base Friday’s lessons around the topic of endangered species, in particular, endangered wild cats. 

If you wish to find out more about The Big Cat Sanctuary, please visit their website at www.thebigcatsanctuary.org.

We will also be holding a raffle at the School – Tilly Counsell (First Form) kindly produced a poster with the details displayed below.