New Partner! Hamerton Zoo Park

It is with great pleasure that The Civet Project welcomes a brand new partner for 2026: Hamerton Zoo Park in the UK.  Partnership with The Civet Project Foundation is particularly important to keeper Cathy who has been instrumental in organising and delivering Hamerton's Civet Day events as well as their involvement in various viverrid campaigns throughout the year. In this blog, Cathy explains all that Hamerton have been doing for civets with The Civet Project Foundation:

Hamerton Zoo Park is proud to partner with The Civet Project Foundation, a charity close to our heart as we care for two Viverrid species, the uncommonly seen Sumatran White Bearded Civet and Binturong. Since the zoo first opened to the public in 1990, we have been dedicated to highlighting the species not frequently found in UK collections, and our pledge to support Viverrids is no different. 

When we welcomed our pair of Sumatran White Bearded Civets they were the only individuals of their species held in the UK and we have since successfully bred eight pups. Owing to a reoccurrence of infanticide from the female in the early days of breeding, all subsequent pups have been hand reared by keepers, giving us an exclusive insight into early-stage civet development. The information gained from rearing the pups allows us to advise others on best practices and developmental milestones expected. We have since sent four of the Hamerton bred civets off to other collections in the UK, sharing the civet love further!

We first introduced binturongs to the collection in 1997 and they have also had excellent success with breeding, allowing us to send individuals out to multiple UK collections and even further afield such as Australia!

Since The Civet Project Foundation launched as a charity in 2023 Hamerton Zoo Park has been enthusiastically getting involved with campaigns to raise civet awareness, and in January 2025 two of our small mammal keepers attended the first BIAZA Viverrid Workshop hosted by Dudley Zoo & Castle to engage with fellow Viverrid keepers and share our knowledge; keeper Cathy even gave a presentation to the delegates on our success with rearing civets.

In 2024 we highlighted the first official World Civet Day celebrations with special Viverrid talks around the zoo but our keepers decided they wanted to go bigger. So in 2025 we hosted our first World Civet Day event with fundraising stalls and exclusive talks to educate our visitors more on the wonders of civets, the threats they are facing and the incredible work that The Civet Project Foundation is doing. With the help of our wonderful supporters, we raised an incredible £600 for The Civet Project Foundation.

Following on from our success last year, we hosted another Civet Day event on the 4^th April, encouraging our visitors to join us to learn more about Viverrids and raise funds for TCPF by participating in our various stalls. We were absolutely blown away by the support that our visitors showed and our total raised was an incredible £700! 

It is so easy for me to care so deeply for these animals that I have the pleasure of working with every day, and the honour of standing in as foster mum for, but TCPF giving our zoological collections the resources to encourage this love in our visitors and virtual supporters is incredible. 

Do you want to become an official zoo partner of The Civet Project Foundation?

For partnership enquiries, please email Dr Jes Hooper: jes@thecivetproject.com