A great photo which epitomises all that is dodgy about Twycross's display of animals. David Hancocks' book A Different Nature is certainly not perfect, but it has a brilliant list of pointers about the design of good zoo exhibits (from a display pint of view, rather than a husbandry one). This breaks just about every rule in the book.
One interesting thing I noticed at this visit is a disadvantage of all those glass windows - many of the exhibits were completely unviewable as all the windows were frozen. There are far too many for them to ever be able to clear them manually, so any in the shade just never got defrosted...
A great photo which epitomises all that is dodgy about Twycross's display of animals. David Hancocks' book A Different Nature is certainly not perfect, but it has a brilliant list of pointers about the design of good zoo exhibits (from a display pint of view, rather than a husbandry one). This breaks just about every rule in the book.
Why can't British zoos get a significant amount of government funding? Or taxpayer funding? Kansas City Zoo in the United States just had a historic tax law passed that enables the zoo to receive $14 million annually, and that is just one example of numerous American zoos that receive millions of dollars each year from taxpayers. I can just imagine how the quality of many British zoos would drastically improve with the allotment of funds on an annual basis. Some zoos in the United States, such as Point Defiance just south of Seattle, receive up to 40% of their operating budget via local taxpayers, and thus major U.S. zoos can afford to lavishly spend on new concessions, exhibits, entrances, etc, while their British counterparts struggle to survive with their aging infrastructure.
Allthough zoos in the US gain much more money from taxpayers then their European counterparts. The quality of enclosures isn't that much better, all those immersive and extreme expensive enclosures are not always better and most of the times of the same level as European enclosures, which are built with much less money. for example in the Netherlands Burgers Zoo shows how a zoo can easily survive and create very good animal enclosures without receiving a yearly funding....
Allthough zoos in the US gain much more money from taxpayers then their European counterparts. The quality of enclosures isn't that much better, all those immersive and extreme expensive enclosures are not always better and most of the times of the same level as European enclosures, which are built with much less money. for example in the Netherlands Burgers Zoo shows how a zoo can easily survive and create very good animal enclosures without receiving a yearly funding....
Well, zoos in Rotterdam, Leipzig, Hannover, Prague, Dublin and Gelsekirchen, to name a few, have all been essentially rebuilt primarily with money from their local, regional or national governments. Leipzig's Gondwanaland, for example, received over $50 million euros from the state. Burgers' is pretty unique in its ability to operate as a private, family-owned zoo that has generated enough money to build a series of extraordinary exhibits.
I do think it is important to note that despite lack of government funding many zoos in the UK are excellent and that there are probably plenty zoos in countries which do receive government funding which aren't necesarilly better.
Twycross is in the state it is due to some very specific decisions and philosophies concerning animal exhibition. Funding may have a role to play in some aspects but it is a huge oversimplification to suggest that this is the only issue.
It simply isn't the case that the country is full of crappy zoos waiting for the magic wand of government funding to save them from creaking inadequate ifrastructure.
Of course it would be nice to have government funding and in some cases it would make a very real difference but that isn't how it works here.
