It looks like eight of Chessington's 28 humboldt penguins were killed by an urban fox around a month ago, with the news only just leaking. It appears that the fox broke into the enclosure one night in late June, killing eight penguins and seriously injuring a ninth (who will make a full recovery). This is in spite of the fact that the enclosure was built in 2015 with specific features to deter foxes.
Media outlets have been slamming the park over the past 24 hours for allowing this to happen and subsequently misleading visitors by putting a sign up at Penguin Bay saying that the penguins were in their "behind the scenes" enclosures as the park made rennovations to their public enclousre as an explanation for why the bay was empty. While this is technically true, the Resort did not acknowledge the incident as the reason for this publicly until this morning.
The park posted one of their "you may have read in the press ..."
Twitter videos about the incident earlier. Disturbing news all round, and kind of shocking that it's only just come to light. RIP penguins.
Burniel | Great at theme park knowledge, not so great at designing signatures.
