Personal Vision of other UK zoos

S

Sand Cat

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Following on from the very interesting topics on personal visions on future developments at Chester & London Zoos, I thought that it would be interesting to come up with some similar plans for any other UK animal collections. I don't think it would be worth starting up seperate topics for each collection, so here is one for all of them!

The idea is simply to suggest how you'd like to see a zoo develop - i.e. axe some species and bring new ones in, build new exhibits, etc.

My choice is Blackpool Zoo - mainly because I've been to it more recently than any other 'big' zoo. Here are my ideas, although I imagine other people will come up with far more imaginative stuff:



*New Elephant house on the edge of the zoo (i.e. behind the cafe), including a small yard, small sand paddock and a grassed area of up to 2 acres, with a waterfall and large swimming pool. The existing Asian Elephants will be moved here, with facilities to accomodate a breeding bull in secure facilities. The circus-style elephant feeding/show routine will cease and the elephants will be encouraged to forage and behave more naturally. The indoor elephant house will accomodate a few small African species, such as hyraxes, aardvarks and mongooses.

*The present elephant yard will be completely refurbished as an enclosure for a pair of Sun Bears. This will have climbing facilities, swimming pool etc. There will be some glass viewing panels but mostly the enclosure will be hot-wired. There will be also be a mix of on-show and off-show accomodation for the bears in the indoor elephant stalls.

*The remainder of the old elephant house will become a Chester-style free-light exhibit for Rodrigue's Fruit Bats, with a seperate enclosure for Aye-Ayes.

*Lions will leave the collection and there place will be taken by Amur Leopards occupying the same space, but with a much more densely planted enclosure. There will be two seperate runs of equal size, for a male and female. There will be an off-show breeding den for the leopardess to use. These changes will not affect the tigers.

*The old ocelot house will become a Desert Mammals exhibit. This features Fennec Foxes (inside & out), Sand Cats, Black Footed Cats and Yellow Mongooses (outdoor only). The enclosure behind this building will be used for Jaguarundis.

*Gorilla Mountain unchanged, but the Orangs get a large extension onto the lawn in front of their moated enclosure. This will be quite similar to the Monkey World enclosures, and it will NOT have a water moat!

*Present Sealion pool demolished and rebuilt from scratch. The remodelled pool will be about 1 + 1/2 times the size of the old one, and there will be a small tunnel underneath it with underwater viewing available.

*Red River Hogs move to current zebra & ostrich paddock; both species to be moved on. Some of the paddock animals around the RRHs are now will move about a bit, allowing one of the paddocks to become a hot-wired exhibit for the DeBrazza monkeys already in the collection.

*The grassy run near to the former zoo entrance will house a large group of Bush Dogs.

*The nearby small primate house will be devoted to tamarins & marmosets, with a much better range than is presently the case on display, including Pied Tamarins and as many Lion Tamarins as possible! The Mouse Lemurs will stay in this building as well.

*Lemur Wood to stay as it, but with the addition of Crowned Lemurs.


I think that will do for now. :cool: Any thoughts on the above? I hope some alternatives to my vision are suggested as well!
 
Shame someone won't actually do that to Blackpool zoo. It needs it, especially the thing with the elephants.
 
ashley-h said:
Shame someone won't actually do that to Blackpool zoo. It needs it, especially the thing with the elephants.
Click to expand...

Maybe if I win the lottery... not likely though, seeing as I don't even buy tickets for it! ;) I do actually have a soft spot for Blackpool Zoo, and I think it has improved massively in recent times, but there is definitly room for improvement still. I would love to see a few more unusual species in - and the elephant accomodation is, well, crap, to be honest.

I'm glad you liked my ideas anyway. Any chance of seeing your ideas for Blackpool then?

Jimmy - yes you have, but its a very good craze so thats something I think you should be quite proud of! :D
 
Well I've only visited once and can't really remember a lot to be honest. I can remeber the tigers and lions continuously pacing inside their sleeping area, and remember how awful the elephant housing was, but that's about it. I think the elephants would be my top priority.
 
The collection i would love to overhaul is the Blair Drummond safari park.
Blair Drummond is too small to be a conventional safari park, therefore i would change it into a walk round wildlife park.
Starting at the main entrance i would turn into a carpark and the Entrance to the park at what is now the entrance kiosk, a large visitor entrance building would be built here opening into a large walk through aviary, with spoonbill, ibis, hammerkop and storks, introducing the guests to the theme of the park which will be Africa.
From the aviary, you will walk onto the main savanna exhibit, which will have a large walkway through the heart of it, the savanna will hold white rhino, which already live and breed in this reserve, Rothschild's giraffe, Grevy's zebra, impala, brindled gnu, greater kudu, ostrich and Abyssinian ground hornbill.
Turning left you come to the present African elephant paddock and house, the paddock will be enlarged to encompass the present giraffe and zebra enclosure and will have access to the lake.
The elephant house would be enlarged to include an indoor day paddock and public viewin with an enclosure for rock hyrax and klipspringer.
Swinging round to the right is the present lion reserve which will be maintained for a group of pure bred Angolan lion, past the current Amur tiger enclosure which will be enlarged for African hunting dog.
Further on is the current bison/fallow deer paddock which will be turned into a breeding centre for eastern black rhino which will share their paddocks with Thompson's gazelle.
Heading round to the left on the boundary of the park is a wooded area, which will have enclosures for Congo buffalo, bongo, red river hog, mandrill, Diana monkey and an aviary for touraco and hornbill, this area will be a rainforest themed area.
The central hub of the park is where the current sea lion house is this will be converted to a rainforest house with the current indoor pool housing a group of Nile crocodile with free flying birds in a rainforest habitat with an indoor enclosures for talapoin monkey, Nile monitor and pythons.
Outside this house there will be a large complex of pools for South African fur seal and African penguin, behind which will be an enclosure for brown hyena, this area will be called the skeleton coast, named after the coastal habitat of Namibia.
On to the current bear enclosure which will house a group of hamadryas baboon, behind which in the current childrens farm will be enclosures for Somali wild ass, addax, dromedary, meerkat, yellow mongoose, bat eared fox and secretary bird, in a themed desert zone.
The current bird of prey display will stay where it is withe holding and display area put off show and a large free flight aviary built for African vulture.
Down to the lake and there will be a group of common hippo on the lake with a shared paddock for sitatunga and defassa waterbuck.
Also n the lake will be flocks of lesser and greater flamingo and great white pelican.
Replacing chimpanzee on the island will be a group of gueraza colobus, and across the lake the lemur area will remain the same.
This park has to change as a safari park it is as i say too small an area and when you enter the current drive through, you skirt round the perimeter of the park thus seeing all the animals before you actually enter their reserves!
I have tried to be realistic with my species brought in, but how i would love giant eland and gerenuk in there too.
 
Give me a ring when you do. I don't care about the money, but would love to work for you on that Safari Park. :)
 
Blackpool for sale again?

ashley-h said:
Shame someone won't actually do that to Blackpool zoo. It needs it, especially the thing with the elephants.
Click to expand...

Blackpool Zoo is probably the Zoo in the Uk with the most need of a huge injection of funding, to bring it up to top class standard. Its located in a good zoo site, has an excellent collection of animals for its size, yet still manages to look rather rundown and empty. The car park/access area and entrance
are a poor advert too.

Now there's a rumour it could be for sale yet again. It has changed hands several times since it opened initially as a purpose-built council run zoo, and always with promises of multi-million pound improvements, but they don't seem to happen. Its even more interesting if the rumour is true this time as the current consortium which own it have other zoos in Europe so why do they want to part with Blackpool..?
 
I went with my friend about three years ago (one freezing January morning) when she did the 'elephant experience' and got to wash them and learn all about them.
The keepers explained that two of the elephants were former circus performers and that they used the tricks they'd learned to help examine them and to wash them properly. They also said they took the elephants for walks around the zoo and we saw them doing that later one in the day. You could tell they really cared for them.
This is what it says on the site: "The elephants at Blackpool Zoo are amongst only a few in the UK that have access to their house and paddock throughout the day and night. They also take regular walks around the zoo's 32-acre grounds and in local woodland, where they are free to socialise and walk around at their leisure. This variation in environments also provides mental stimulation to complement their existing physical exercise.
"Environmental enrichment devices have been a common feature of our elephant enclosure for many years now, and are constantly revised and updated. We facilitate diverse projects undertaken by research students in association with our staff, which are, fundamentally, important in realising our commitment to animal welfare and education. Many of these projects result in the provision of devices that are constructed to complement existing methods for the mental and physical stimulation of our elephants.
"The four female Asian elephants at Blackpool are aged between 30 and 40. Kate and Crumple were accepted here in the 1970s from an Asian elephant orphanage, having been abandoned as infants. Indra and Marcella belonged to a German circus that went into liquidation in Holland in 1999, and they would have been put down had we not given them a home here at Blackpool at very short notice. All four elephants have spent their entire lives under the supervision of human carers, and would be unable to survive in the wild."
I would love to see a newer enclosure for them too but at least they do get proper exercise.
 
Hi, I'm new to this site, lots of interesting points.

Blackpool Zoo always seemed quite bad but I thought from these photos they now had a permanent grass paddock? I'm sure they are given access only some of the time, but I think the grass field and wooded area is permanent:

http://www.asianelephant.net/blackpool/blackpool.htm#

although they may not be left unsupervised in what is essentially a low hotwire fence, which may not deter a panicked animal, this still counts as a very good facility. For example, the London elephants were rarely left unsupervised in their moated enclosure in the latter years, but it was still viewed as their enclosure.

For risk of getting by head bitten off I really think the furore over their treatment of elephants by the animal rights lobby definitely contributed to the addition of the grass and wooded paddock. I could be wrong though.
 
johnstoni said:
Hi, I'm new to this site, lots of interesting points.

Blackpool Zoo always seemed quite bad but I thought from these photos they now had a permanent grass paddock? I'm sure they are given access only some of the time, but I think the grass field and wooded area is permanent:

http://www.asianelephant.net/blackpool/blackpool.htm#

although they may not be left unsupervised in what is essentially a low hotwire fence, which may not deter a panicked animal, this still counts as a very good facility. For example, the London elephants were rarely left unsupervised in their moated enclosure in the latter years, but it was still viewed as their enclosure.

For risk of getting by head bitten off I really think the furore over their treatment of elephants by the animal rights lobby definitely contributed to the addition of the grass and wooded paddock. I could be wrong though.
Click to expand...


Hi, and welcome to the site!

Unfortunately those photos do not show the elephant enclosure at Blackpool - I assume that's the grassy area where they sometimes take them out for walks. Presumably the electric fence is put up to discourage them from straying too far and can be moved around and dismantled as required?

The actual elephant enclosure is what is shown on the aerial shots - my view of it is that is very barren, and also I don't like seeing elephants on concrete. A sand paddock is a good compromise I think, this is what Twycross (and Colchester?) have done and it works very well IMO. :)
 
Thanks, yes I realise the actual sand paddock is an extension of the old elephant/rhino/giraffe yards. The following quote is on the Blackpool Zoo site, and was also on the previous site:

"We are fortunate at Blackpool Zoo to have a large (almost 5 acre) field where the elephants are free to eat, rest and play. We also have a woodland area where the elephants can browse freely"

The zoo creche is also supposed to overlook the elephant paddock. Are they referring in this case to the sand enclosure? The flimsy nature of the barrier being just a hotwire fence does not differentiate it from, say West Midlands or Knowsley elephant enclosures, and if they are 'exercised' there under supervision, I would still class this as part of their enclosure if they are able to spend time there each day, as with London zoo where the elephants were supervised when in the moated enclosure. The crucial point I feel is how much time are they able to spend in the 5-acre field? If they are taken there for an hour each morning then I agree it is much the same as Wendy at Bristol doing a round of the grounds or the London elephants being walked before the gates open.

It is also significant that the Blackpool animals have access to their sand paddock overnight. I have often been in a zoo in late afternoon to see the elephants locked away in their night quarters fairly early, even more so in winter. Luckily for the zoo, the indoor quarters have always been particularly spacious. Possibly because they came in for so much criticism after hosting the Scott Riddle workshop a few years ago, Blackpool are the only UK elephant holders as far as I can tell that publicly acknowledge and support the RSPCA report into captive elephants in europe. I'm quite surprised that they go as far to say on the elephant pages of their site that very few endangered species can be released back into the wild.

I haven't seen the zoo for some years, it could all just be very clever PR, but I have to say I'm impressed with the current setup for the elephants, and the percieved husbandry of the group.
 
Blackpool elephants

Its good to hear of another zoo that takes its elephants for regular walks , and to a back section where they can browse/do whatever they like .
I am not sure if it is a good idea to have a regular time -- if the time was different for any given day , it wont fall into a predictable pattern .
If there was a regular daily pattern , the elephants may get more difficult to deal with if there was an unseeable delay .... (?)
 
Going back to the original topic of the thread, there are four collections I would like to see radically altered:

Dartmoor Zoological park: Mainly because of the natural beauty of the setting, and all the associated folklore surrounding Dartmoor, I would really like to see this collection specialise again in European/native/northern hemisphere species, as the landscape really lends itself to them in a similar way to the Highland Wildlife Park. Tropical species just seem out of place at Dartmoor. It would be great to see them bring in more deer species, maybe otter and beaver, pine marten, wolverine, and a bigger collection of temperate raptor species and corvids. The bears and wolves certainly fit in. The sight of dozens of domestic ducks, a single pair of flamingos and pelicans on the lake against such a stunning backdrop don't really do it justice, instead reeds and marsh areas around the lake could be planted, and the area given a hide to watch the heron colony, maybe with an egret colony established alongside them in the trees. European bison could return to where the ostriches are now, and even musk oxen eventually...
In reality, the park is developing exactly as it should, from threads I have read on this forum they are taking care of what they have.

Drusillas Park: The Ann family ran this place up until the late 1990's, since then all the exhibits have lost their theme as new primate cages and aviaries have popped up in every available space left to build on. I'm sure it works, but it would be great, from the perspective of a parent, to see some educational continuity to the exhibits. The indoor section could be expanded to show diversity on earth, with new marine, invert, jellyfish exhibits, even some microscopic animals shown under magnification. The snake and lizard exhibits could become decent-sized enclosures for amphibians, the crocodiles could move out of that rather small pool underneath the tricerotops' model head, maybe colonies of anolis/ uromastyx could occupy this room, as large groups of small reptile species in large enclosures are so much more visually pleasing that a skink or iguana scratching at the glass of a 3x4ft case. The run of marmoset and capuchin cages could be demolished and a clore-style rainforest dome installed, as these enclosures are fairly small by todays standards. I can't quite believe they used to house species like Patas monkey and Drill in these.
The farmyard has amazing educational interp, but the animals have less space than most city farms. Only the cattle and donkeys are returned to paddocks during the night. Some exhibits of crops being grown could replace the chicken run, and the chickens could instead have the run of the farmyard.
It would be good to see areas showing how different animals organise themselves socially, using gibbons, meerkats, coatis, and maybe mole rats, another section to show how animals adapt to extremes, with chinchillas, vicunas, fennec foxes, lungfish etc, an exhibit zone for species that are exceptions to the rule ie flightless birds, flying mammals, egg-laying mammals, fish with parental instincts etc, maybe a couple of exhibits to show taxonomic grouping (they still have a 'world of owls', maybe a large walk-in 'world of monkeys' emulating the squirrel monkeys in London or Blackpool/Dudley, and a few geographically-themed regions, like their 'Beaver Country', which won the UFAW award, and a new australian walk-through flight with wallabies, grassfinches and parakeets.
I heard the next big think at Drusillas is a walk-through 'lemurland', I guess they must have done their market research :)

Amazon World Zoo, IOW: I probably just miss Kilverstone, but the potential for this collection is so frustrating, as I doubt many of the species currenty on display will always be available should they not establish themselves soon. Visually the site has nothing going for it, on flat open land there's not a great deal they can do outdoors to create something special, but the indoor tropical house could really be amazing if they concentrated on South American species. An off exhibit bird breeding centre of the same standard as Chester would really suit a collection that holds around ten toucan species. The indoor flights most of them are held in don't really look like breeding aviaries. The house is split into different zones, the main section could be a free-flight area for south american birds, the other 'rooms' could become a flooded forest zone, with artificial tree trunk forests standing in large glass-sided pools for stingrays, turtles, caiman, pacu etc, another could become a primate section, similar to the clore rainforest lookout, with free-ranging primates and sloths, the flamingo section in the house could hold a colony of scarlet ibis and roseate spoonbills/ egrets, (as the flamingos do look like they'd be better off in one of those big flights a few miles away at Flamingo Park), and the part of the house showing threats to the Amazon could be extended to include a soya and banana plantation, with talks and simulated spraying to really bring home a message to visitors. For the same reason I would like to see more interpretation around the struggles of tribal peoples in the Amazon and World Bank/IMF stranglehold over the governments of this region. The outdoor area really just should be used as optional outdoor space for some of the larger species inhabiting the house, right now it looks like a tacked-on, inferior zoo next door to the tropical house itself. With paca, prehensile-tailed porcupines, breeding sloths, tamanduas and so many toucan species, it would be very gratifying to see the collection taken more seriously in terms of breeding facilities for all the rarities present.

Africa Alive: Like Dartmoor, this place has an amazing setting, approaching Port Lympne in its beauty, only they don't seem to make full use of it here. I remember the old suffolk wildlife park, seeing a tiger cub on a leash being chased by children, and 'Joey' the solitary chimpanzee wearing a t-shirt and smoking cigarettes, so I am in no way saying the current incarnation isn't a massive improvement (shame the dingoes didn't go to Banham though).
The problem with Africa Alive is that it had some special stuff at the beginning, when it was breeding the fossas (possibly for the first time in years in this country), and then bred from the striped hyenas, for a while it had the only striped hyenas, fossas, aardvarks and talapoin monkeys in the country. But some of its rarer species died out and nearby colchester zoo has basically acquired everything that made Africa Alive stand out and then bred more recently from them, ie the fossas and aardvarks.
I would firstly build up earth banks planted with trees to shield some of the hoofstock paddocks from the wind that whips in off the sea, to allow for more delicate species to be kept. I'd have a marwell-type 'aridlands' exhibit where the buffalo were, next to the Somali wild ass, for the Arabian oryx and addax, and shelter this stretch of paddocks with planting and earth banks. The current addax area could remain exposed and house nubian ibex/gelada. The african plains could be extended down to the river, to include the current oryx and barbary sheep paddocks, and vulturine guineafowl, gazelle and a small wildebeest group could be added, with maybe a few less giraffe or zebra. The vervet monkeys could also be mixed on the plains, as the Geoffroy's spider monkeys formerly living in one of the trees in the centre of the exhibit have now gone (where to?).
The bottom of the park has a marsh area, currently with sitatunga and lechwe, where river hog could be added, and a large slice of mature, fairly dense woodland, surrounded by paddocks. This could really be an amazing mixed central african exhibit, with primates in the trees, and bongo/ forest buffalo/ okapi in separate paddocks around the outside where the nyala and ankole cattle are now.
There is a vast, empty lake with islands, with a water buffalo paddock, the whole are could become a common hippo/ pelican reserve. The lemur islands nearby could be connected to the large ringtail one and the whole network made into a mandrill/ pygmy hippo exhibit. At the north of the park, behind the fossa cages, are several acres of unused land which used to have a miniature railway circuit under the previous owners, as it is bordered by trees this could become a new Madagascan area, similar to the lemur facility at Linton zoo.
The top section of the park, with all the smaller cage-type exhibits, could be a network of free-flight aviaries for african birds. The hyenas, fossas and aardvarks also deserve much better accomodation, especially if they are serious about breeding from them (again, in the case of the hyenas).
Development at Africa Alive seems to have halted for now, (unless anyone knows of any big plans), I can only assume that either there isn't the money for new exhibits, or that the park development is basically complete in the eyes of the owner, and generating sufficient money from gate revenue and the caravan park run from the site. Again it is just the frustration of seeing species in dwindling captive populations like aardvarks in fairly ordinary housing, as if there is no great urgency to breed from them.
 
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