Every single view of an enclosure is either through glass, or over fencing. In many ways this is a positive; everyone enjoys an unimpeded view. But the problem with it is in order to achieve this they have often had to turn enclosures into 'open-topped rooms'; the Colobus was a particularly good (bad) example of this. Walls are used where fencing would really have been IMO more appropriate. As a result enclosures can feel smaller than they are, which matters to humans but probably not to most of the inhabitants. More importantly, I have always thought that views of the surroundings act as good enrichment for a lot of species, and I worry that this has been decreased at Colchester. Also, for plenty of arboreal species caging in itself is a good thing. The strange thing is that bars and caging are still very much in evidence; you can see them at the backs of enclosures or in the indoor accommodation, often in large quantities.
IMHO there are economic and cultural forces that create very specific types of space to view animals in a captive setting. Colchester to me is typical of a collection that has thrived on high visitor footfall, and has refined its visitor experience to minimise dead space, missed or hard-to-find exhibits, and likelihood of animals liable (or in a few cases, able) to retreat off-exhibit. Your encounter with a wild animal is more likely to be from a covered gallery, through glass, and with the sound of large numbers of families with young children echoing through the hard surfaces of the public area, with music sometimes piped in over this. Not much is left to chance or imagination in how the animals are presented or how you are supposed to see them.
There is a theatrical, derealising element to this I think, which is fine, as the majority of families want to provide their children with a myriad of experiences and sights when they go to the zoo, would likely rather stay dry and warm and not have their kids wandering off.
So I think of Colchester as a 'value for money' zoo, but I don't think you can teach reverence for and respect of other species when they are presented in certain ways. What's strange about Colchester is its pockets of not doing this; the wild dogs, some of the African enclosures on the newer land, these are very different in feel to the main bulk of the collection.
I think that for primates and carnivores, Colchester actually provides surprisingly open and often (for carnivores) well-planted habitats. I think the tendency to maximise use of space is problematic for ungulates and ratites. I can't think of another collection in the UK where rheas are kept in a sand enclosure with llama and alpaca in the children's farm area (let alone Darwin's rheas), I felt it unnecessary to introduce warty pigs to a collection that held two other wild suid species already, especially when they were mixed with deer species and then appeared to destroy the remaining grazing in the paddock to the extent that it had to be covered in wood chip. Perhaps there was a recommendation to suddenly keep these deer on bark chip, who knows, but the factor that precipitated it seem to be the introduction of the pigs.
I personally find the mixed African paddock like looking at some kind of perpetual drought-season scene, and I think the measure of the success of a mixed exhibit is whether the species can actually all use the paddock at the same time as opposed to some being restricted to the service yards. The zebra, originating (correct me if I'm wrong), from grassy paddocks in Denmark, are not suitable IMO for an enclosure that lacks grazing; if they can go on to maintain a breeding group of the new zebra with a functional stallion, I will be surprised. With Africa Alive not far away (and in competition), I would love Colchester to just choose a single grazing (or small number of non-grazing) species to work with for this enclosure, and leave visitors to seek out Africa Alive if they want to see some panoramic suggestion of an African plain. Would it really impact on visitors for this to become solely a black rhino facility, or just a mixed enclosure for giraffe and kudu? Even edible browse species planted amongst the rocks would create some kind of natural enrichment here.
Because I think it increases the chance of remaining, I was disappointed that the pygmy hippo were able to breed successfully in the enclosure they're housed in, and hope one day they are given a strip of land with at least a little grazing (Whipsnade rather than Marwell-levels would do), and access to a natural pool they can disappear into from time to time.
While there are good views of the elephants against a naturalistic backdrop of rock and vegetation, I really don't like the use of low hotwire: while uglier, fencing would provide scratching and leaning posts, and a secure surface to push against when interacting with other elephants (especially for young animals play-fighting). I was pleased that Colchester really tried to create a cohesive breeding herd, using ex-circus animals, but I wish they'd scrapped the mixed 'reserve' and doubled the space available to the elephants. People forget that they initially meant the elephant paddocks to be grass - there were early articles on their website soon after the exhibit opened about the elephants enjoying digging up the turf and the need to replace it. I very much hope that Colchester don't rest with what they've created here.
I
do think Colchester has very high-quality environments for many of its species - the bears, sea lions, wild dogs, hyenas, cheetahs, mangabeys all come to mind. I think the chimpanzee extension is going to be a very positive step, and hope that the comments above reflect a desire for change rather than a condemnation of a collection that can't or won't.
