Zoo admits for the first time that its animals aren’t all moving to the Wild Place

Until yesterday the Zoo’s story, and heavy implication, was that all the animals at Bristol Zoo would be moving to more spacious and luxurious accommodation at the Wild Place Project. That’s what the Bristol public has been widely led to believe. Not only that, but that the animals would have new homes by Christmas 2022. 

On the ITV local news last night (4th Jan 2023) we heard a very different story in response to our campaign which has been questioning the fate of the animals for a number of months. We saw four giant tortoises being packed up in boxes to be sent to Jersey Zoo and a new spin promising that the animals would be found homes, not at the Wild Place, but at other zoos around the world. 

This deception has been part of the Zoo's spin for the past two years and can now be seen as one more piece of their hopeless management and planning. The cost of shipping animals around the world is enormous (one keeper suggested it costs almost a million pounds to move a pair of lions) and will eat into the cash reserves that the Zoo says it doesn't have. Meanwhile Bristol Zoo - which could be making money - is closed to visitors.

But none of the senior management responsible for the Zoo’s closure was to be seen on the news and the unenviable task of trying to reassure the world about the fate of the animals was left to Sarah Gedman, team leader for Large Mammals. She didn't look comfortable and we hope she hasn't been hung out to take the fall.

In their new time scale, the Zoo admitted that many of the animals would still be at the Zoo for another two years or longer. During this time they still need to be fed and watered with a skeleton staff in deteriorating conditions. Or are they going to live in the middle of a building site, as might happen if the Zoo gets planning permission for their hideous bunker development and the developers start bulldozing while the seals and monkeys wonder what’s happening to their home?

‘What’, asked Caron Bell, the ITV journalist 'is reason for the Zoo closing?' A good question and one that needs to be asked again and again. The Zoo trotted out its usual PR lines about falling numbers and complaints about the food and facilities on site. But this is all either untrue or very peculiar thinking indeed. Firstly, the Zoo's own statements for the last ten years do not show falling numbers yet they are now trying to present a different picture, re-spinning this as a fall in ’paying visitors’. 

We ask: ‘If so, whose fault is that?’ The Zoo’s Trustees have been warned for years that they need to take a more active and imaginative approach. And, even if the arguments were true, what kind of approach to running a business is this? If you were a cinema and people complained about the films you were showing and the food and drink you were selling, would you a) give up straight away and close the cinema or b) maybe think about showing films people did want to see and bring in nicer food and drink? 

It’s extraordinary for the Zoo to blame the public for their own failings.