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.

Come to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park for the August meeting of Counterpoint Networking in conjunction with Aspinall Business Club and hear Sharon speak on the cross river gorillas.

An opportunity to do some networking with other small businesses in the beautiful surroundings of the Port Lympne Mansion, near Hythe, Kent.

Timing: 6-9pm

Food will be supplied.

To book please follow this link

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.

Come to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park for the August meeting of Counterpoint Networking in conjunction with Aspinall Business Club and hear Rob Gordon speaking about Animal Photography.

An opportunity to do some networking with other small businesses in the beautiful surroundings of the Port Lympne Mansion, near Hythe, Kent.

Timing: 6-9pm

Food will be supplied.

To book please follow this link

This time at our local business networking group we have the privilege to have a fascinating talk from one of our members.

In May 2009 Alan Noake had the unique opportunity to pay a short visit to the Aspinall Foundation’s reserve in the Republic of The Congo. Alan will share some stories of his experiences of touring this fascinating country in particular the tour of the Gorilla orphanage.

There will also of course be time to network with fellow local businesspeople at the Port Lympne Mansion and hear from Amos about Overses Projects at Port Lympne.

Timing: 6-9pm

Food will be supplied.

To book please follow this link

Counterpoint Networking member Jane Unsworth is kindly running this workshop to help to raise money for the group charity. The group is raising £1000 for an observation tower for the Iberian Wolves at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park.

It is the opportunity to discover more about one of the most ‘talked about’ techniques currently used in modern psychology, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or Tapping, which enables people to experience a relatively quick-change in quick-time. EFT helps:

Learn How To Overcome Whatever Stops You From Having It All …

After a couple of hours people may notice a difference – so come along with something you’d like to feel differently around – in order to test its authenticity for yourself. But nothing too major for this one-off taster due to the time allotted and its group setting (a good gauge is to consider how long you’ve wanted to be free of ‘it’ – the shorter the time the quicker its likely to be dealt with).

The only other things to bring are your curiosity and a willingness to participate. To paraphrase the Henry Ford saying, which has become a bit of a Life Coach mantra:

Whether you think it will or you think it won’t – you’re probably right …

Please support the group and the charity by Booking Here for £20 plus VAT.

Jane’s (Adv Hypnotherapist, Life Coach, EFT and NLP Practitioner) business ABC Simple As … works from practices in Folkestone, Hythe and Whitstable, Kent – for more information please call 01303 223233 / 07951 522829 or check out the website at www.abcsimpleas.co.uk.

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.

Members of Counterpoint Networking and the Aspinall Business Club based in Hythe have pledged to raise £1000.00 for an observation tower for the Iberian wolves at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. This will enable the keepers to secretly watch the wolves to find out more about their life and habits and to make sure they are ok. This is difficult to do currently as they are timid and nocturnal.

We will be using a Just Giving page to keep track of how much money we have raised. All donations are welcome, even if you are not a member!

So far, we will be making a collection at each meeting, Jo Dodds is running a Social Media workshop, Jane Unsworth from www.abcsimplas.co.uk will be running a ‘tapping’ (EFT) workshop to raise funds. Please feel free to donate here and/or support our events. If you want to be kept informed of our networking meeting dates and/or our charity events then please join our mailing list.

To find out more, click on the ‘Sponsor Me Now’ button on the left of this page.

Calling all budding artists!

Have you ever dreamt of seeing your artwork prominently displayed for all to see? Well, thanks to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, that dream can become a reality! The Wild Animal Park, situated near Ashford in Kent, will hold a wildlife art exhibition over the 2010 Easter Break (2nd April-11th April). All budding artists are invited to enter for this fantastic opportunity; it doesn’t matter whether you do stunning sculptures or perfect pictures, all mediums will be considered.

The art exhibition week will commence with a preview evening on Thursday 1st April opened by Vic Reeves—a keen artist himself. Held in the Marquee at Port Lympne, the preview evening will be an excellent opportunity to view the dazzling exhibition pieces that have been submitted. The preview evening is free, but by invitation only. Entry to the exhibition is free to all paying visitors to the Park. A donation from all sales will go towards The Aspinall Foundation to aid their vital conservation work both at home in Kent at Howletts & Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks and abroad.

Vic Sharrat, award-winning wildlife photographer, Chairman of The Wildlife Art Society International and organiser of the art exhibition at Port Lympne said:

“I have been happily associated with Port Lympne for over 10 years. This event will be a completely open exhibition and we are inviting wildlife artists countrywide to submit work for hanging, not only in the standard mediums of paints, but also sculpture and photography. Both the selection and hanging team look forward to viewing the varied work, and, more importantly, raising a lot of money for animal welfare through THE ASPINALL FOUNDATION”

Should you wish to participate in the exhibition or attend the preview evening with Vic Reeves please contact Vic Sharrat on vic@vicsharratwildlifeimages.com.

The deadline for submission is the 11th March 2010. Good luck!

Website: www.totallywild.net

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.