Robert told us that Port Lympne are very pleased with the birth of two new baby tigers.

The Gorillas

Sharon gave us some information about the Gorillas at Port Lympne. The oldest gorilla at  Port Lympne and Howletts is 53 years old. He was rescued from a village in Africa, where he had been tortured by children in the village. The gorilla was discovered by a French helicopter pilot who just happened to be flying over the centre of the village at the time. The gorilla had stomach injuries and, before the Aspinal Foundation had reserves abroad, the Gorilla was transported back to the UK.

Sharon gave some good advice about visiting the parks and in particular about observing the gorilla. The first rule for a good visit is not to mimic the gorillas. Coughing at the Gorillas is seen as aggressive, it is better to make a sound like clearing your throat quietly, this is seen as positive. A second rule is to reduce your size and not to puff your chest out; to not look directly at the gorilla’s and to appear to be meek, looking down. You will get much more from a visit to the gorillas, if you are close enough to them, if you observe these simple rules of communication.

Sharon was asked what the Gorillas are fed each day. They apparently start the day with some herbal tea; their favourite is camomile (there’s an opportunity for members target=”_blank”Foreman & Jones. For breakfast they are given vegetables and herbs. Carrots, swede, turnips, beetroot, cabbage, celery, spinach, French beans – it depends on what is in season. They are also given branches from trees like Hazel, Willow and Silver Birch. The gorillas strip the bark and use it to clean their teeth. Jarla’s group love to eat nettles, which is unusual so the keepers think this may come from a memory she has of when she was a baby in the bush. A large male Silver Back Gorilla will eat 10-20 Kg of fruit a day.

Sharon went on a month long educational visit to Lebialem which is in Cameroon.

The objective of Sharon’s educational visit was to map, using GPS, the movement and size of the near extinct Cross River Gorilla. There are only 280 Cross River Gorillas left in the wild.

Member News – Fashion Show

Nicole is running a fashion show at Port Lympne on 29th September 2010. The fashion show has been combined with a visit to the park if you want as well. The fashion show will be for age ranges from 20 to 50 and not just size zero models, real life size models as well.

14:00 – 18:00 Visit the Park

18:00 – 19:00 Champagne, Pimms

20:00 – Dinner

21:00 Fashion show, Raffle and Auction

22:00 – Talk about the Port Lympne animals

The price is ONLY £40,  which from the above itinerary looks like a bargain!

Photo Credit

Aspinall Business Club 14th July 2010 at Port Lympne

http://aspinallbusinessclub.co.uk

Visitors and members present

Suzzane Emson http://www.kentwildlifefund.com
Jaci Godmin-Irvine http://www.estatelegacyservices.co.uk
Carol Arter http://www.arterworks.co.uk/
Lee Freeman http://www.kentbusinessdirectory.co.uk
Alan Noake http://www.theicelab.co.uk
Barry Nutley http://www.viridisec.co.uk/
Christine MacSween http://www.lionaid.eventbrite.com
Trevor Cobb http://www.microwaveservice.co.uk
Steve Orca http://www.OrcalocalHythe.co.uk
Chris Raines http://www.copy-link.co.uk
Peter Wood Hawkeye
Robert www.aspinallfoundation.org
Dreda Van-Beer http://www.juststyle.me
Jo Dodds http://www.jododdssocialmedia.com

The Meeting

Robert Boutwood introduced the meeting, giving us an update about the animals that have been born over the last month; an Elephant calf that was rejected by the mother as it was her first baby. The keepers have hand reared it over the last six weeks spending 15 hours a day feeding and caring for the calf, the latest news is that the calf has been accepted back by the elephant herd so is doing very well.

Mark Kingstone Jones – Eduction and Research Officer

Mark gave a talk through a thunderstorm about the varied work that the Port Lympne does to educate children, teenager and adults and companies about the conservation work. This takes different formats depending on the audiences.

School Groups

At school groups it is mainly talking about conservation, zoos, and adoptions. The zoo has out-reach officers go to schools and give talks Port Lympne also offer junior keeper for the day experiences http://www.totallywild.net/schools/index.php.

Mark and his team run Enrichment programs for the animals that makes the visitors experience much more interesting as well. Using ropes and karabiners supplied by a company Port Lympne have made the snow leopards life much more interesting by hanging prey from a tree see this great video of the snow leopard in full flight climbs a tree to get a special treat in the snow.

For the children they give them a task of taking the lid off some black barrels, putting in a selection of food, then writing their names in large writing on the barrels and putting the lids back on securely. The barrels are then carefully placed in with the Gorilla, to work out how to get the lids off and into the food. The children can see which barrels are theirs because of the writing and the Gorilla’s can have an interesting thing to play with.

Corporate Team Building

Port Lympne also run corporate team building workshops which are tailored to what the company wants to get out of the day, how many people are involved, and how much time they have available; one activity we saw was four teams making a reindeer for the lions to play with. The team members all had fun making the reindeer from papier-mâché. The lions then loved tearing the reindeer apart and throwing them up in the air to catch in their mouths.

Lion Aid

The English Lions, the Dutch Lions and the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon all lost the battle for the World Cup

Real Lions are also losing their battle for existence in Africa. Join Lion Aid on 22nd July 2010 for the Lion Aid Challenge Trophy and ensure lions will participate in the WILD CUP forever. Brad Burton, the MD of 4Networking, will be dressed up as a lion and we invite Company teams and individuals to participate in the competiion to splatter Brad with paintballs. An amazing Business Networking opportunity and a chance to support Lion Aid. The participants will take part in the following challenges:

• Paintballing
• Par 3 (9 hole) Golf
• Water Walking & Archery.

The venue is Great Chart Golf and Lesiure centre, Great Chart, Ashford, Kent, TN23 3BW. Whole day including lunch is offered for only £35. Ticket and information www.lionaid.eventbrite.com
chris@lionaid.org. Phone 07772697498

Alan Noake

Trip to the Aspinall Reserve in the Congo

Alan Noake gave a talk about his trip to the Republic of Congo to visit and do some voluntary work for the Aspinall Foundation at their Western Highland Gorilla reserve. Alan talked about the Gorilla explaining that they eat 9K of fruit a day and that adult males weigh up to 200Kg. A Gorilla spends approx 30% of its time eating, 40% sleeping and 30% travelling. The gorillas are social animals and live in groups with one dominant male, 5 to 7 females and infants. Female gorillas have one baby approx every five years. While there Alan saw the lodges that the Aspinall foundation are building so that they can have visitors close to the Gorilla so helping with the funding of their re-introduction of gorillas into the wild.

What a great meeting it was!

We had three new members join:

Babs Seymour – Forever Living Products (FLP)
Barry Nutley – Viridis
Steve Holley – Orca Local

And some visitors (as well as the usual members!)

Sarah Washford – Writer and trainer
Andy Setterfield – Hoodner’s Horse, Great Chart
Allison Hogben – Mobile Beauty Therapist

We had a talk from Adrian Harlam – Director of Animals at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park

Adrian started on the large Carnivores section in 1986, progressed through the ranks and become a Director.

Poaching in Tanzania

Recently Port Lympne has returned two Rhinos to Tanzania and these returned pair had a calf; so in two years the population has increased by one. 13 Rhinos have been killed in a 15 month period. The reason for the killings is that the poachers want the Rhino horn which sells for up to £25,000. The horn is used in remedies for rheumatism, arthritis and other alternative medicines. When the average yearly wage is £1500, then from a financial point of view, there is a big incentive to kill the Rhinos, and the poachers just cut the horn off and leave the rest of the body where the Rhino fell. Adrian also showed us an elephant tusk again recovered from smugglers, the ivory is used to make knife handles, and in the past, piano keys, snooker balls, and Japanese ivory carvings.

Lions

There are about 20,000 lions left in the wild. In South Africa they organise canned hunts; you choose your animal and they supply it and you shoot it. They breed the lion cubs and then take them away from their mother, so the lioness comes back into season. In the wild when the leader of the pride become old, he would either die from disease or be killed by a younger stronger lion. At the moment in South Africa, as they have a lot of visitors for the Football World Cup, they are offering two for one, shoot a male lion which is what everyone wants to do and also get to shoot a female lion as well for free. As these lions have been handreared, they don’t run away when they see man approaching, they think that they have come to play.

Port Lympne have a theatre group travelling around Africa performing play by mime to educate the African population about the wild animal population and how it is declining because of the poaching and hunting.

How to reduce poaching

One way to reduce the hunting would be to ban the import of animal trophies and skins into the UK. The UK has a very influential place in the Commonwealth so if we took the lead we could convince other European countries to follow suit. LionAid are campaigning for this currently.

Education at Port Lympne

Port Lympne see their role as to educate visitors about the animals, to get the visitors to like the animals and have an affinity with them. Then to progress onto why the animals desperately need the visitors’ help otherwise there will be no animals left for our grandchildren to see, they will only see them in old films or documentaries.

The Aspinall Foundation website talks about the international conservation work that Port Lympne is involved in.

On 12th May we had a great business networking meeting at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. The meeting was really well attended with Counterpoint Networking members, and some new faces too.

Attending were:

Members Lee Freeman, Barry Nutley, Chris Raines, Tuija Foster, Paul Tatt, Jaci Godman-Irvine, Alan Noake, Trevor Cobb, Christine MacSween, Steve Holley, Hayley Jones and us of course. We had 4 new visitors as well which was great!

We had a talk from one of the keepers which was absolutely fascinating as usual. We did all of this while watching the monkeys in their enclosure and then we were privileged enough to see into the monkeys’ bedroom!

Diabetic Monkeys – is that possible?

Matt, one of the keepers that looks after the De Brazza’s Monkey gave the Aspinall Business Club members a talk about George, a 20 year De Brazza’s Monkey, who has developed diabetes.

Matt noticed that George was losing weight, going to the toilet very often and drinking lots of water; the classic signs of diabetes. Matt was more aware of these symptoms because he himself has diabetes. Matt suggested that the keepers try to inject George with insulin, in the same way that humans with diabetes inject themselves with insulin.

“You’ll never get that monkey to let you inject him!”

The vets agreed this after working out based on George’s weight how much insulin he would need a day. Everyone was sceptical except Matt that George would accept being injected every day. Matt had decided that he could inject George in his tail, so the next day Matt took the insulin and successfully injected George. Matt has a special relationship with George and we could see that when Matt was calling George.

Matt has known George for about eight years and has a good relationship with him, which was the key to the successful insulin injection. However Matt has a couple of days off a week, so the day was approaching when someone else would be responsible for injecting George, so Matt needed to train someone else to cover for him while he wasn’t at Port Lympne.

The next day Matt went into George’s area with one of the other Monkey keepers, so that they could both do the injection. When they approached George he disappeared into his house, Matt thought at this point they were going to have some trouble with George, because normally when two humans approach the animals, they think it’s the keeper and a vet!

“He’ll never let someone else inject him!”

Matt and the other keeper followed George into his house and remarkably George was standing against the wall, with his bottom in the air ready for his injection. Matt gave the other keeper the all clear and he injected George straight away, with no drama at all (apart from the other keeper receiving a slap round the head from George after it was over!).

Matt and George have set a precedent – now other zoos are injecting their diabetic monkeys, whereas in the past they just used to put them down.

We had a great time and would like to give special thanks to Matt for his friendly and very informative talk. We are always amazed by the level of knowledge these keepers have and their passion and dedication to the animals.

Local Businesses Networking Together

Again we had some new local business owners at our latest meeting. One of them, Jayne Andrews of Pemburton Payroll Bureau, said “Thank you so much for the Networking Event last week we had a really good time as well as meeting some really interesting people. We look forward to seeing you at the next event in May.”

Trevor from the Microwave Service Company brought along his daughter who is studying Wildlife Conservation at University so she was dead impressed to be visiting the Tapirs in their ‘house’! Carl decided that a visit to them was better than a talk in the mansion, and he was so right!

Orca Local Card Encourages People to use Businesses in Hythe

Steve Holley from Orca Local Hythe came along to start networking locally now that he is promoting his new website all about encouraging people in Hythe to shop locally. He is planning to nominate the Aspinall Foundation as his charity as a result of coming to the meeting, which is great. Check out his website to find out what he is doing in Hythe to help local businesses – and don’t forget to register for your Orca Local Hythe key card.

Networking with a Difference – we learnt about Tapirs!

We had a talk from Carl the Deputy Hoof Stock Manager. Carl talked to us about the Tapirs that he looks after at Port Lympne Zoo Park. Horses that you may have seen running in the Grand National are descendants of the Tapirs from 20 million years ago. The tapirs have the same internal organs as the horses you see running in the Grand National.

Tapirs wear Sun Cream in England

The Tapirs’ natural environment is the jungles of Congo and Gabon, where they are protected from the rays of the sun light by the natural canopy of the jungle. At Port Lympne the keepers have to apply factor 50 sun creams to the Tapirs’ backs three times a day to protect them from sun burn. The tapirs do not have the pigment in their skin that we have in ours that make our skin go brown and protects it from sun damage.

If the keeper wants to hold the Tapirs then they have to hold their ears as there is nothing else to hold onto. The Tapirs that we saw weigh nearly ½ ton. They can live to be between 30 and 40 years old, they are semi aquatic and in the wild will spend up to 70% of their time in the water like a hippopotamus, to stay away from predators.

The Tapir’s body is hard as they have three inches of fat on their backs.

How to Feed a Tapir

The Tapirs at Port Lympne receive up to 20Kg of fruit and vegetables a day, carrots, bananas, carrots and special hay that cost approx £60 a bale – the seven tapirs will eat a whole bale between them in three days! Port Lympne has a release program and release the Tapirs back to protected areas in the Congo. In the past Tapirs have been found as far north and Japan and Indio China. The local inhabitants see the Tapirs as positive spirits because they are said to eat their bad dreams.

Tapirs are Endangered due to the Farming of Palm Oil

The Tapir is endangered because of the increasing trade in palm oil; the areas that the Tapirs live in the wild have palm oil trees and the Tapirs strip the bark damaging the trees. So the farmers shoot the Tapirs, so their existence is threatened by man and their use of Palm oil rather than rape seed oil.

On 10th March we had our March Networking Meeting at Port Lympne Mansion.

We were very lucky this time to have local singer Anna Stone to entertain us with her fantastic singing, which you can see below.

Thank you Anna!

There was some great networking with Lee Freeman, Jane Unsworth, Barry Nutley, Trevor Cobb, Graham Seymour, Paul Tatt, and Nicole Pitt-Williams attending, among other people.

Charity Plans

During the meeting we discussed our charity contribution to the Aspinall Foundation (since our networking meetings are held in conjunction with the Aspinall Business Foundation). Members agreed that we would like to do more as a group to help to raise money for the Aspinall foundation. We have chosen to support the Iberian Wolves – they need a new lookout which costs £1000. Members have agreed that we will do a voluntary collection at each meeting and that members will do some other fundraising at other times. Some were interested in doing the rhino ride (more about this soon).

Family Summer Picnic

Everyone was up for a family and friends of ABC/CPN day in the summer (picnic, opportunity to meet some animals), more details to follow.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday 14th April at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. For more information see here.

On 3rd February 2010 Counterpoint Networking in conjunction with Aspinall Business Club at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. We had a fantastic time, learning about the rhinos from keeper Paul Beer who had kindly come in to speak to us, even though he had a cold, for which we were very grateful!

We learnt about:

• the gestation period in rhinos
• how rhinos are being returned to the wild
• the problem of poaching
• the problem of deforestation in the wild

You can read more about the rhinos on the Aspinall Business Club website and see all the pictures of the meeting here.

The meeting was a bit of a Tweetup (a Twitter meet up!) – we had a number of people who all knew each other through Twitter, some of whom had never met in person! ‘Twitterers’ were:

Counterpoint Members

• Lee Freeman from Kent Business Directory (@KentBusinessDir)
• Hayley Jones of Foreman & Jones (@HayleyJonesUK)
• Jane Unsworth of ABC Simple As (@abcsimpleas)
• and me of course (@Jododds)

Other Twitterers:

• Barry Nutley (@Greenenergychap)  whose new daughter Eleanor Grace was born last week – congratulations Barry!
• Graham Seymour (@ShopperAnon)

To learn more about our Counterpoint members and their businesses click here to view their profiles.

On 25th February we are having our informal networking at the Red Lion Pub (this is because it was a morning meeting this month, so we make up for that with an evening meeting in the same month!) Find out more here.

At the next meeting at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park on March 10th we have local singer Anna Stone performing for us which is something to really look forward to. We will be setting the meeting up as a Tweetup too so that even more new people can come along. Find out more here.

On Wednesday 13th January the Counterpoint Networking meeting took place in conjunction with the Aspinall Business Club at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent. In spite of the ice and snow we had a great turn out and did some good networking. We had a few new visitors this week: vocalist Anna Stone who is working on her new business using her design skills (and who will be singing for us at the March meeting!) , and Trevor Straw, Furniture restorer in Acrise, Folkestone.

Many members attended also. Jaci Godman Irvine from Estate Legacy Service specialises in Wills, Trusts, Lasting Powers of Attorney and Probate attended to hear the talk about gorillas from Phil Ridges as did Gareth Hurford-Jones of Red Dragon I.T. Tuija Foster from The Folkestone Handbook, Trevor Cobb of Microwave Service Company and Julie Couch of Hestia Property Services.

Chris Raines from Copy Link Ltd, Grace Hill Folkestone was showing us his new products: reproducing old postcards to A4 size, presented in a frame. He told us know many people were coming in to buy these for presents or for themselves. He has a very wide range of postcards to choose from and we all pored over them, looking at how things used to be. Chris also spoke about the great quality of printing he does on fabric and T-shirts where the printing actually becomes a part of the fabric, so the printing will remain long after the fabric has degraded!

We have a new Counterpoint Networking member Lee Freeman of Kent Business Directory which is a resource for businesses and members of the public. Businesses can post their details on their business page, posting job vacancies, and special offers for potential customers to discover. Lee has a special offer for members of Counterpoint Networking which will be emailed out direct to members for them to take advantage of.

Hayley Jones of Foreman & Jones, Herbalist, Hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner attended too and told us all about the 10p appointment offer that is running at Foreman & Jones to celebrate their 1st birthday of being in the High Street, Hythe. They are repeating the 10p offer they ran in 2009 as it was such a success! The offer is that until 13th February 2010 new patients are entitled to a full appointment for Herbal medicine, Hypnotherapy and/or NLP, Reflexology, Osteopathy, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and Counselling for a just 10p. All the 10ps (and any extras they are being donated by kind people) are donated to MacMillan Cancer Support. Also during this period Allergy Testing is offered for £45 (usual Price £69), and there is £5 off Craniosacral therapy. See the Foreman & Jones website for details.

Where would we be without Gordon Haining, our resident Toastmaster and Master of Ceremonies? As usual he called us all through (in his very professional toastmaster way!) to the part of the meeting where we had a very interesting and entertaining talk on the subject of gorillas from one of the world’s leading experts, Phil Ridges. You can find out more about what he had to say at the Aspinall Business Club Website.

You know we like to do something different for our networking – well this one really was special!

On Tuesday 1st December we had the well-attended joint Counterpoint Networking and Aspinall Business Club (ABC) Networking meeting at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. We met at 8.30am for bacon sandwiches (and a vegetarian option!) and teas and coffees before hearing a little from Adrian Harland, Animal Director, about the work that goes on at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, and just as importantly all the work that is going on across the world in the name of animal protection and conservation.

Neville from the park (Wildcat keeper) also told us of the great success of the Wild Cat Hootenanny that was supported by our member Gordon Haining.  He also thanked members Jaci Godman-Irvine and Jane Unsworth who have been volunteering at the zoo, which is a benefit of being a member of the ABC.

I talked a little about the recent research I have been doing about the effectiveness of the Counterpoint Networking Site for our members. I found that the Counterpoint Networking site is becoming more and more well optimised for Folkestone and Hythe which is a specific strategy we have been following for the last few months. (The site is already very well optimised for Shepway). For example, Foreman & Jones have recently listed their profile on the Counterpoint Networking website and already they appear on the first page of Google (above their own site!) for “hypnotherapy hythe”, “hypnotherapist hythe”, and “sleeplessness Hythe”. Hayley Jones of Foreman & Jones gave us a testimonial.

We then had a talk from Simon the monkey-keeper who told us that he actually grew up in the animal park as his parents were both keepers! He has been working here for years and just like all the other keepers and workers we have met, he was so enthusiastic about his work.

We then made our way down to the enclosure housing the de Brazza’s and Colobus monkeys and were lucky enough to meet them and feed them! We were surprised (as you’ll hear on the following video!) that we were actually able to go into the enclosure and feed the monkeys out of our hands – not just throwing food over the fence!

It was such a special event, and everybody thoroughly enjoyed it – we won’t go on anymore, we will just let the pictures speak for themselves.

We hope you join us for our next meeting.

Another good night of business networking and socialising was had by all (from what I remember but after all that sparkling wine it was all a bit hazy by the end of the night!) at Tim’s Vinos y Tapas in Folkestone.

Alan Noake of The Icelab and Gordon Haining our resident Toastmaster were both driving and both on my table so I hold them fully responsible for how much of the wine I drank! Jaci Godman Irvine of Estate Legacy Services was very well behaved with a BNI meeting early the next morning. Trevor Cobb of the Microwave Service Company said he felt a bit poorly the next day, so he must have gone down with something!!

Nicole of Sureslim brought her husband, who’s promised to come to another meeting soon (he may be a bit disappointed when we don’t roll out the champagne next time!). Julie of Hestia Property Services won the bottle that Tim put up as the prize for the quiz and David Harris, our newest member, of The Harris Foundation said we were all very noisy!!

I think that’s the main highlights!