INTERVIEW ❝


VISITORS LOVE TO INTERACT WITH ANIMALS OR US AND FEEL THAT THEY CAN AND HAVE CONTRIBUTED. AS A FAMILY ZOO, THIS IS SOMETHING WE HAVE ALWAYS STRIVEN TO ENCOURAGE


The trick has been to get visitors to accept our difference – no big animals but an amazing diversity suited to living on Exmoor (with a little help). Meerkats, pink birds, monkeys, otters, bigger cats and dogs are staple recognisable animals and we also have some unique and unusual species (fishing cats, singing dogs, binturong and sand cats). Visitors love to interact with animals


or us and feel that they can and have contributed. As a family zoo, this is something we have always striven to encourage. If our visitors leave with just one more grain of knowledge or a better appreciation of the world we live in relative to the animals and different people around them then we have achieved something.


For a modern zoo, the breeding programmes are not just about breeding. It is the co-operation of caring and looking after the species in captivity. Occasionally a zoo with good genetic bloodlines of a certain managed species gets to breed but, often as not, this is shared. Everybody looks after single sexed and non-breeding animals on behalf of the captive animal species and some you get the planned opportunity to breed. Our best breeding experiences are


with say black lemurs. In the wild an endangered species, living on Madagascar with virtually no habitat left and everybody treating them as bush meat (a free protein meal), we have a third- generation black lemur here who has recently become a mother. We have bred and looked after black lemurs for over 20 years in cooperation with the breeding studbook.


Tell us about the educational team you have at the zoo. How does that work and what do you hope to achieve?


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Education and conservation are the two key pivots of any good zoo. We may try and achieve conservation but it is our educators that tell everybody what we are doing and why. It is their encouragement to visitors that promotes morals and ethics and helps people find ways in which they can help even it is just buying products not made from palm oil or shopping from sustainable farming. Either here in the zoo or at the schools we visit, we try to explain that we are all part of the web of life, we all have a responsibility to each other, the future of our children and the world we live in.


How have you developed the business over the past five years or so? Have you noticed a change in the kind of things visitors take more interest in? The zoo gets a lot of return visitors especially those who like visiting north Devon. The animals with charisma never lose their star appeal and everybody has certain expectations of what they want to see when visiting any zoo.


Where to you hope the business will be in five years’ time? It would be good to become a full member of the European Zoo Association which will give us a better chance to become involved in worldwide breeding programmes and related educational initiatives. We have been accepted as temporary members and should become full members in February. The zoo intends to try and help with


some of the native Exmoor species and help conserve and reintroduce disappearing butterflies such as the marsh and heath fritillaries. It is our intention to breed them here on site and in conjunction with the Exmoor National Park, Exmoor Trust and the Butterfly Trust release them under licence in certain prepared areas of Exmoor. Hopefully in five years’ time our daughter will have picked up the reins a lot more and the business will start to come under her stewardship.


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