Fota Wildlife Park

Cork in the south boasts the wonderful Fota Wildlife on Fota Island near Cork City. It's a free-roaming wildlife park owned by the Fota charitable Trust, which runs it for conservation and educational reasons. Unlike some safari parks which you need a car to visit, Fota has been laid out so you can see the animals by following the footpath, and it is easily accessible by train as it has its own station on the main Dublin-Cork line. Many of the animals in the park, like the wallabies, maras, kangaroos and lamas, are free to roam all 70 acres.

The paddocks have unobtrusive low electric wiring, which minimises the sense that the animals are fenced in. Capybaras, ducks, geese, swans and pelicans live together around the lake, which is also home to simang gibbons, white handed gibbons, red ruffed lemurs, mandarin and colobus monkeys, who all have their own island territories. The only animals which are fenced in safely from the public are the dangerous animals like the cheetahs, which the park has been very successful in breeding.

One of the park's most popular attractions is its family of over sixteen ringtail lemurs who forage in the trees and grassy areas and will often fearlessly come to investigate visitors. The Park also provides educational projects for school groups, and young children especially enjoy visiting the egg incubation house, and watching the live video cameras in the houses of animals with babies.

The Park also organises fun days with wildlife treasure hunts, and places where you can use microscopes in summer and Fota also offers an education programme which includes fieldwork courses for zoology students from University College Cork as well as its own conservation, and ecology courses. Fota is also helping to fund a research project on the genetic diversity of cheetahs, which are an endangered species and is involved in a project to reintroduce white tailed sea eagles to Ireland.

The park has a shop, cafe, and also shows a video about its work and its animals.