In May 2022, Tom Jones took his four year old son to Bristol Zoo just as he had been regularly doing for the previous four years. As he walked around, on one especially luminous day, he found himself appreciating how truly beautiful and precious the gardens are, what a unique and historic site it is and reflecting on the special significance of its place in Bristol’s heritage and culture.

Then he thought about the Zoo Garden’s imminent closure and could not believe that where he was standing was destined to become someone’s multi-million pound luxury home. He wondered why no one else had made any serious attempt to stop this from happening and realised that if the Zoo was to have any future in Bristol, then he was going to have to do something about it.

Up until that point, Tom, like many others, had accepted the Zoo’s version of events but, having attended several residents’ consultations and spoken to a number of Zoo staff, he realised that a lot of things didn’t add up and started to question the whole enterprise. Who had made these decisions and why?

In the following months, Tom undertook hundreds of hours of research into the Zoo’s annual reports and accounts and strategic plans to understand the change in direction. He had conversations with staff from Bristol Zoological Society, the directors from other zoos, conservationists, keepers, zoologists, trustees and shareholders to educate himself about the story behind the Zoo’s closure. It was a labour of love as Tom is primarily a musician, not an investigative reporter. No one had asked him to do this. No one was paying him to do this. But he found a lot of interest, support and opinions along the way.

In the end, he found there was a very different story to be told, a version that the Zoo’s management would never want anyone to find out but one that needed to be heard. A story that undermines the Zoo’s business decisions and asks whether the Zoo site needed to close at all, or if it could have a brighter future that benefits the whole of the city.

To read some of the key reasons cited for closure, visit our ‘The faulty case for closing’ page.

For an Executive Summary of the reports findings and conclusions, please click here.

For key facts, statistics and graphics, please go to: Press and media information

To download and read the full report , please click on the link below.