I was born in 1984 and as my grandparents lived in Clifton we would visit very, very often. To a child in the 80's and 90's, it was an awe-inspiring place, walking through the Guthrie Road entrance into that walled city zoo was like stepping into another world. Lions, tigers, leopards, gorillas, orang-utans, reptiles, sharks, monkeys, elephant, giraffes, zebra, okapi, tapirs, hippos, polar bears, vultures and eagles, seals and penguins, pelicans, flamingos, small mammals, it had everything and in a beautiful garden setting. It is without a doubt what started my obsession with wildlife and zoos. Sadly, I don’t think it has the same effect these days and I actually gave up going about 5 years ago as I did not like the developments I was seeing there.
What was also great about the zoo up until the late 90's was it had a myriad of small paths and hidden seating areas that made it seem so much bigger. It also focussed on the gardens as much as the animals and branded itself as 'Bristol Zoo Gardens'. The major redevelopment of the heart of the zoo in the late 90s and the creation of seal and penguin coasts did produce some nice exhibits, but at the expense of biodiversity and did destroy some of the quaintness and order of the zoo that has never really returned. For example:
-Opposite the main entrance was the north aviary which used to hold monkeys but was converted into a bird house by the early 90's, with a monkey enclosure opposite that now hold drills. Between them, there used to be steps down towards the prairie dogs, with the pavilion/cafe on the right and the rose garden on the left. The side of the north aviary that faced the entrance had a large rockery that was so well kept. Then, late 90's, whole rockery/aviary demolished to make the flamingo enclosure. The steps between the aviary and monkeys were closed off to visitor access so the vista down the zoo towards the south you saw as you walked in was lost. The birds in the north aviary were relocated to the round aviary and the vultures left the zoo.
-The southeast corner of the zoo held okapi in 2 yards, a paddock of emu, muntjac, white storks, wallaby and a red kangaroo. My hatred of emu comes from one of the bastards in that paddock that nicked my tuna roll right out my hand when I was 8. There was also a yard containing arabian (?dorcas) gazelle up the ramp, which lead round to the polar bear pit (later held sumatran tigers, that just paced, paced, paced, like the bears use to), then down past some small monkey enclosures, kookaburra and a floral house. The walkway was covered by a large plant-covered trellis and lead you past the okapi to the monkey house. In the late 90's this was all smashed down in tactless fashion. The area was home to several large mature trees, so whilst the zoo lectured visitors on protecting the environment and not cutting down trees, it had no qualms about chopping its own down to make way for seal and penguin coasts. This came at the expense of the gazelles, emu (thank ****), tigers, some of the monkeys, most of the white stork - a few were bunged in with the flamingos but the flock was massively depleted - wallaby, deer, kangaroo and zebra, who were evicted by the okapi.
- The giraffes had a small yard next to the pygmy hippos. The fence was very low and when I was about 6 a giraffe swiftly bent over and stole my grandfathers cap while we were posing for a photo. We never got it back. Between the giraffes and seals was a pathway towards the lake that was sheltered by dense foliage and had benchs in alcoves. This was flattened to make way for Wendy's new home who herself was displaced by the new gorilla island. The giraffes left the zoo. The creation of the gorilla island reduced the size of the stork/wallaby paddock and destroyed the wading bird enclosure.
- Creating the butterfly exhibit more recently resulted in the beautiful rose garden and half of the aviaries opposite the prairie dogs being demolished. The prairie dog enclosure used to house mara and alpaca and occasionally penguins, and peccaries lived at various times in the enclosure next door. There was a covered walk past some aviaries leading to the penguins. Now the main enclosure only holds prairie dogs, the peccary enclosure has been demolished and the aviaries have been demolished to make way for the Japanese garden thing, which as been merged with the long-standing herbaceous border. The old penguin enclosure has become the area's single aviary.
I'm well aware that the conditions in the zoo for some animals were atrocious in the 1980s and 90s and clearly the megafauna had to go. My gripe with the zoo is the loss of biodiversity, gardens and smaller, intimate and quaint areas to make more room for play areas, dinosaurs and to keep a few big animals that it even now doesn’t really have space to keep – despite the large area of the zoo taken up by the gorillas, it is still not massive and the maximum group size is limited. Turning the Wallace aviary into another lorikeet feeding exhibit, the monkey temple/children farm into a plant exhibit and losing the okapi and replacing with warty pigs is just terrible in my view. Despite pouring money into play areas and new education centres, many animals are still in dubious enclosures – drills, hippos, even some of the monkey enclosures in the 10 year old monkey jungle are very small by modern standards. The pygmy hippo exhibit is just too small and they don’t have a decent expanse of water to swim in – so why was the former seal pool demolished and given over to zona brazil's tamarins and capybara instead of merging it with wendy’s enclosure and using the whole thing for hippos/duiker/cranes and possibly even the okapi? Many zoos have managed to incorporate decent mixed exhibits which keep the number of species/animals up in a space-efficieny way – Bronx zoo has mandrill, red river hogs and de brazza mixed, Antwerp has cape buffalo and about 30 species of birds, chester has orangs, lar gibbon and otters etc etc. More creative design and carefully planned mixed exhibits with smaller species could have been less destructive and maintained biodiversity, still been appealing to children/families and still filled a conservation need.
Sorry to have waffled on but just my take on my local zoo. If anyone is interested have all the old zoo maps from the 1990s and the artist impression leaflet of the new heart of the zoo development I can scan and upload.
