It should not be overlooked that Colchester is one of Europe's most successful fund-raisers for conservation - it consistently comes out at the top (or near the top) of the league table for EAZA campaign contributions, and also raises a large amount of money for various projects worldwide. Th husbandry of its collection is, generally, excellent. it does genuinely interesting things with its public presentations. All of this outweighs, easily, the slight ugliness of the various enclosures there.
I absouloutly agree here! There cosnervation efforts are most impressive! And the staff are very keen that the animals are all in good health.
Enclosure design I'm aware has been making some disscsuion some of which is negative on here. I think some of the critisisum is rather unnecisisary. Colchester has lots of good enclosures now and I don't think we have to be put off by some slightly ugly fake rock work. But of course it does have its weakness' with the new orangutan exhibit being an obvious example here. I will not defend this 1 dissapointing exhibit but I can assure you all that most of the zoo is better than that.
The mandrill enclosure is very good and its pleasing to see how the mandrill group are using there facility.
