The proprietor of Colchester Zoo has vowed to maintain the attraction as a conservation project and not as a “concept park”.
Speaking on the Essex zoo’s 60th anniversary, Dr Dominique Tropeano also explained he under no circumstances apprehensive for its foreseeable future during the bleak times of the pandemic.
The zoo is because of to transfer from working as a commercial enterprise, to a charitable belief, in 2025.
“I want to make certain the zoo will continue on for good,” mentioned director Mr Tropeano.
“I want it to continue on as a zoo. I do not want it to turn out to be a topic park we want to keep on the perform we are performing now, this is get the job done in conservation and do the job in training.”
The web site in Maldon Highway was very first opened on 2 June 1963 as Stanway Hall Zoo Park by former RAF pilot Frank Farrar and his Australian-born spouse Helena.
An approximated 12,000 folks visited on the initial two times, and its first animals involved a bactrian camel, a pink kangaroo and a cheetah.
The Farrars’ niece, Angela Tropeano, and her partner – who grew up with livestock on a farm in France – bought the zoo in 1983.
The team opened a 1.9 acre elephant enclosure in 1998 and a 24-metre (79ft) long underwater viewing tunnel in the sea lion enclosure in 2003 – two of its major at any time developing initiatives.
The web-site built countrywide headlines in November 2013, when a few of its timber wolves had been shot lifeless right after escaping by means of their metal wire fence and past the perimeter fence.
The zoo reported it ongoing to pay £25,000 for each day in electrical power and routine maintenance expenditures through the Covid lockdowns, and posted a £667,000 fall in revenue in 2020, but all those functioning profits picked up two several years afterwards.
The zoo is home to extra than 160 species across 60 acres of parkland and lakes.
“[I] never ever apprehensive for its upcoming. Even during the Covid tough occasions [I thought] we will hardly ever drop, we will not likely be crushed we experienced aims and we want to stick to them,” reported Mr Tropeano, talking to BBC Essex.
“Whichever impediment we confront we have to bounce over this obstacle and we will hardly ever give in – we will normally be there.”
The zoo celebrated the anniversary with a dedicated “zoobilee” 7 days in the course of 50 percent term, culminating in a timetable of workshops, magic displays and steel drum performances on the Saturday.
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