Sadly, I think the dispersal of the collection will start sooner rather than later. The newly-opened Hemsley Conservation Centre, elsewhere in Kent, which i visited today, is claiming that they will soon be receiving rusty-spotted cats, giant flying squirrels and slow loris.
I really liked the RSCC, and am very sad it is closing. However, its marketing was simply appalling, in a market where it needed to be strong (Wingham and Howletts so nearby....). The facebook page was rarely updated. The website was inaccurate. The Twitter feed was unused, largely. The zoo had no profile, even locally, let alone further afield (the aforementioned Hemsley place - nice enough, but tiny, and not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the RSCC - has been mentioned to me, by colleagues and friends, several times already, due to the coverage it has received in the press and on TV. The RSCC? Never.
And as a place to visit, it was great for People Like Us, but for real people....? In the many visits I made, the cafe was never open, for example. The signage was all wrong. There weren't an enormous number of things to detain people for whom a curled up, sleeping fanaloka wasn't a heart-tremblingly exciting sight. These things matter.
