Hi, I have just written a blog post about this subject...can you tell me what you mean by him not owning the zoos, and you sympathizing with his views? What did the article get wrong exactly? I was under the impression that he started or inherited the zoos, and had control over them. Let me know if there is any factually incorrect information in the post, please.
The Aspinall Foundation is registered charity number 326567, regulated by the Charity Commission (for England & Wales). Most of the other zoo large zoos in the UK are also owned and run by charitable trusts (eg ZSL for London & Whipsnade, North of England Zoological Society for Chester etc).
They are all not-for-profit organisations, which have charitable objects (in other words, aim to do good). This means that they are allowed to raise money for charitable purposes, without paying all the taxes that a business would pay. For example when you pay for admission to one of these zoos, you will be asked if you pay UK income tax; if you do, you will be asked (nicely) to make this payment into a gift-aid donation, which means that the zoo can claim back the income tax which you paid on this sum of money. Commercial organisations like Chessington or the Sealife aquaria which exist to make money for their shareholders cannot do this.
To qualify as a registered charity, these organisations need to meet the legal requirements of the Charity Commission: stating the Charitable Objects and names of the Trustees who are legally responsible for running the Trust, filing accounts which show what the Trust is doing and so on. These details are available on the Commissions website
Home - Charity Commission
The late John Asinall started out by keeping an exotic pet (a bear, if I remember correctly) but eventually he had a large private collection of animals in the grounds of his mansion at Howletts, which then expanded to a second estate at Port Lympne. Howletts was opened to the public in the 1970s and the charitable trust was established in 1984. From that time the trust has officially owned the collections: members of the Aspinall family have served as trustees, together with other like-minded and responsible people. There are currently six trustees including Damian Aspinall and Zac Goldsmith, the Tory MP who has an interest in environmental and conservation issues; he is the son of the late financier and political activist Sir James Goldsmith who was a friend of John Aspinall.
Mr Aspinall is also a trustee of the Howletts Wild Animal Trust (registered charity 1100845) which has very similar Charitable Objects.
So the
Express was wrong in describing him as the owner of the parks. Is he famous? "Up to a point, Lord Copper". Is he Britain's most famous zoo 'owner'? I bet David Gill would contest that and I would nominate Ben Mee for this dubious honour.
I sympathise with Mr Aspinall's views to the extent that I am in favour of reintroducing zoo animals to the wild in properly controlled circumstances (and as far as I can see that is true of the Aspinall Foundation's schemes) and I do believe that zoos would be very different in an ideal world. Unfortunately this world is far from ideal and our zoos are far from ideal, even less fortunately I believe that Mr Aspinall's intemperate remarks are likely to make zoos worse by belittling their efforts to interest and educate the public. Like his father, he seems to believe that being outspoken and controversial will generate respect for his views. He runs the risk of being thought as elitist and egotistical as his father was.
I think the comments in your blog are generally fair and I agree with most of them. The only part I think you should amend is the reference to the deaths of the keepers at Howletts: these all happened during John Aspinall's lifetime (as your reference makes clear) and I feel it is unreasonable to associate these tragedies with Damian Aspinall.
Alan
