Nordsjællands Fuglepark & Zoo Nordsjællands Fuglepark has closed

[Hvedekorn]

Unfortunately, Nordsjællands Fuglepark never managed to find a willing buyer - as per this thread - https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/another-danish-zoo-for-sale.484174/ - and has now closed permanently.

A major loss for bird nerds, especially in the Nordic zoo world, but unfortunately it doesn't exactly surprise me that no one wanted to risk buying a bird park for many millions of DKK. Though I do feel a bit bad for a lottery winner who donated 250,000 DKK last year to save the place, but now to no avail.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

A pity; I aimed to visit a few months ago but the high price of everything in Denmark meant I had to drop it from my itinerary.....

 

[Hvedekorn]

Is it even feasible to reach the place with public transport? It's a bit out in the boonies after all.

Which zoos did you end up seeing instead? Places like Copenhagen Zoo and Den Blå Planet are of course a bit more noteworthy on a global zoo scale than a low-budget bird park, but they can also be relied on to keep existing unlike most of Denmark's smaller zoos which could very well be gone in 10-20 years.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

Is it even feasible to reach the place with public transport? It's a bit out in the boonies after all.

A bit of a hike at 40 minutes walk from the nearest railway station, but I'd checked the route out on Google Maps and it was entirely walkable.

Which zoos did you end up seeing instead? Places like Copenhagen Zoo and Den Blå Planet are of course a bit more noteworthy on a global zoo scale than a low-budget bird park, but they can also be relied on to keep existing unlike most of Denmark's smaller zoos which could very well be gone in 10-20 years.

Just those two and Eskilstrup Krokodille Zoo. There's a whole swathe of places I hoped to visit in Denmark but dropped in order to save money - as it is, although I stayed in a cheap hostel, my three nights in Copenhagen cost more than any other stretch of my recent 3.5 week trip around Europe, even the five nights in Berlin.

On the bright side, shortening the Denmark portion of the trip allowed me to free up the time required to revisit Dvur Kralove during the Czech portion and Wilhelma during the German portion, and to make travel a little more relaxed and less time-intensive.

 

[lintworm]

Unfortunately, Nordsjællands Fuglepark never managed to find a willing buyer - as per this thread - https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/another-danish-zoo-for-sale.484174/ - and has now closed permanently.

A major loss for bird nerds, especially in the Nordic zoo world, but unfortunately it doesn't exactly surprise me that no one wanted to risk buying a bird park for many millions of DKK. Though I do feel a bit bad for a lottery winner who donated 250,000 DKK last year to save the place, but now to no avail.

That is bad news, not in the least part for my Trends Thread. That small bird park housed a lot of rare American passerines.

 

[Hvedekorn]

That is bad news, not in the least part for my Trends Thread. That small bird park housed a lot of rare American passerines.

I know that many, if not most, of the park's rarer species came from private breeders (and are in the process of being sold back to private breeders), so at least those species aren't necessarily lost forever, though of course seeing them in the future still requires that zoos jump through the hoops to get them from private hands.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

so at least those species aren't necessarily lost forever, though of course seeing them in the future still requires that zoos jump through the hoops to get them from private hands.

Which is largely an unlikely prospect I fear given the general obscurity of the taxa in question and resulting low chance they'd be in the collection plan for anywhere but another specialist collection such as Walsrode...

That said, considering how secretive and suspicious many private keepers are of interested enthusiasts unless they already have the right connections and know the right people, I suspect that the slender hope somewhere else does pick them up in future is the only route for the vast majority of us to ever have a chance to see any of these taxa

 

[snowleopard]

Seeing Nordsjællands Fuglepark close down is a shame and it will be a great loss to the region. I'd be interested to note how many annual visitors it received in its prime, as even the great Walsrode has often struggled in terms of attendance and it was at threat of closure a decade or so ago. A lot of bird zoos tend to diversify and add a few mammals here and there, as in the case of Vogelpark Avifauna in the Netherlands, and that helps to boost attendance numbers and get more (and younger!) visitors in the entrance gates.

There's a lot of mammal-centric zoos in the Nordic region, as I found out when I visited 16 Danish, 6 Swedish and 2 Norwegian zoos in the summer of 2022. What facilities now hold the most bird species in the area?

 

[Hvedekorn]

Seeing Nordsjællands Fuglepark close down is a shame and it will be a great loss to the region. I'd be interested to note how many annual visitors it received in its prime, as even the great Walsrode has often struggled in terms of attendance and it was at threat of closure a decade or so ago. A lot of bird zoos tend to diversify and add a few mammals here and there, as in the case of Vogelpark Avifauna in the Netherlands, and that helps to boost attendance numbers and get more (and younger!) visitors in the entrance gates.

There's a lot of mammal-centric zoos in the Nordic region, as I found out when I visited 16 Danish, 6 Swedish and 2 Norwegian zoos in the summer of 2022. What facilities now hold the most bird species in the area?

An article from 2019 mentions 20,000 annual visitors, and I haven't heard about the number being much higher or lower in their last few years.

The biggest bird collection left in the Nordic countries is probably the other bird park in Denmark, Danmarks Fuglezoo/Frydenlund Fuglepark, which holds more than 100 species (Zootierliste says 153, but I think it's a bit lower since someone seemed to add all of their newest species without removing their recently lost species). They have very few passerines compared to Nordsjællands Fuglepark and not nearly as many rarities, but a more varied collection overall.

 

[Dassie rat]

The park is/ was 1 of 5 ZTL collections with a green honeycreeper
One of 4 with a moriche oriole, yellow-hooded blackbird and Vogelkop black-capped lory
One of 3 with a black-winged lory
One of 2 with a blue-black grosbeak and spotted and white-lined tanagers
And the only one with a blue-cheeked rosella, Cuban bullfinch, eastern open-rumped tanager, Jackson's widowbird, Mathew's sulphur-crested cockatoo, Orinochan saltator, rusty-collared seedeater and bronze sunbird