Save Bristol Zoo Gardens From Becoming A Private Housing Estate - Long Read

Picture the scene; it is 2062 and I am walking past Bristol Zoo’s iconic entrance with my grandchildren. They turnaround and ask me, “What’s behind those walls Grandad and why does it say, ‘Zoo’ when there aren’t any animals in there?” I answer, “Once upon a time there was a Zoo here, Bristol Zoo. It was 186 years old and everyone in Bristol loved it very much. But the people who were in charge chose to move the Zoo to another home outside of the city without asking anyone what they thought. The site was closed for 7 years and when it did finally reopen, the gardens were supposed to be for everyone, but after a few years the residents changed the rules. Now they’re private and I haven’t been in there for over 30 years. They were the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen. How terribly sad that the people running the zoo and the city back then didn’t have the vision or imagination to find another way to keep the Zoo in Bristol and open for everyone.”

If you didn’t know already and despite what you may have heard from Bristol Zoological Society themselves, this is a highly likely outcome if their current plans go ahead for the sale of their iconic site.

Now. Rewind to the present day.

It is about 5pm on a Thursday afternoon in June, 2022 and I find myself in one of my favourite places in the whole world; Bristol Zoo. We are in the midst of a mini-heatwave and today has been one of those astonishing English summer’s days, hazy but clear blue skies, a crisp yet simultaneously soft light and rarely felt heat has been beating down on the Zoo’s many visitors throughout the day. But it is quiet now, 30 minutes before closing, most people have left for the day and I am standing in dappled shade, created by an array of extraordinarily majestic trees. Everywhere I look I see trees and flowers, gardens astonishingly mature, verdant and lush. And wildlife. Exotic wildlife. I’m in the middle of Bristol. I’m also in Eden. I don’t know how many times I have stood here and yet it never ceases to move me.

I have my 4 year old son on my shoulders and we are watching meerkats scurrying around right in front of us while in the near distance, we can see golden headed lion tamarin monkeys swinging through the trees. As I stand here in these sacred surroundings - I cannot, literally. Can. Not. Believe. That in just over 2 months time, these gardens are to be closed to the public for at least 5 years, sold to a private developer and turned into a luxury housing estate. If the Zoo’s current proposal gets planning permission and goes ahead, where I’m standing right now will be someone’s multi-million pound private home and garden in around 5 years time, as will the iconic herbaceous border just behind me which will also be bulldozed. Until then, this unique slice of paradise, 186 years of historic fabric, woven into the heart of the city, will be a building site. And afterwards, it will never be the same again.

Earlier today, my son and I left our home and travelled to the Zoo by bike. 15 minutes later, we were making eye contact with an Asiatic lion just metres in front of us. We then walked a short way along the famous top terrace and watched Red Pandas peacefully munching on bamboo. Shortly afterwards we were spending time with South American fur seals moving through invitingly crystal clear salt water. Communing with wildlife. I look up and see the graceful architecture of Clifton College watching over both people and wildlife. A phenomenal juxtaposition of natural and urban, of people and wildlife; Bristol Zoological Gardens are unique. Bristol Zoological Gardens are a jewel in the crown of this city we all love. They are 186 years of the natural world, history and collective memories contained within a 12 acre site in the heart of a city. Once they are sold off to a private developer to be turned into housing, they are gone forever and not coming back.

Watching Bristol Zoo Gardens going through the stages of preparing to close to the public, ready to be sold off to a private developer is like watching a tsunami unfolding in excruciating slow motion, incrementally moving towards the moment of impact and no return. Except this is not an impending natural disaster over which no person has any control over the outcome. This is an irreversible, subjective decision being made by a very small group of people which will affect a very large amount of people in perpetuity.

But this does not have to happen. There is another way. The site of Bristol Zoo Gardens is unique and by selling off Bristol Zoo Gardens for housing, the society are making an irreversible and catastrophic mistake. I believe that history will judge this decision most unfavourably but that even at this late stage, it is not too late to stop. Listen. Halt the closure, scrap the planning proposals, change course and rescue victory from the jaws of defeat.

If the Bristol Zoological Society chose now – which it has not done so far - to meaningfully engage with the enthusiasm and goodwill of members, visitors, the wider public, the history, the memories, the possibility for change, the potential for restructure and development, for new investment, what its presence in the heart of the city means to people, even if that means it will take longer to develop the Wild Place, it seems extremely likely that they would conclude that they cannot afford, not to keep Bristol Zoo open.

Why is this happening?

Bristol Zoological Society has so far sold this decision to the people of Bristol as unavoidable; “safeguarding the Zoo’s future” and helping to further their mission of conservation and “saving wildlife together” following the pandemic. This is smoke and mirrors. BZS did lose money during the pandemic - £1.8m – unquestionably a large sum of money but nowhere near enough to vindicate their decision to sell Bristol Zoo Gardens.

Up until the pandemic hit in March 2020, Bristol Zoological Society’s intention was to invest £25m in both Bristol Zoo and the Wild Place Project, as stated in their 2019 financial accounts. By Autumn of 2020 they announced they were to close Bristol Zoo. What changed? At that stage, despite temporarily running into trouble with an insurance policy – later resolved - they hadn’t even lost £1.8m, unquestionably a large amount of money but not enough to justify selling Bristol Zoological Gardens.

But a member of the Zoo’s senior management and/or a trustee made the previously unthinkable, thinkable, by suggesting having the Clifton site valued with a view to selling. The management and trustees were subsequently advised by their estate agents that if they can sell the Clifton site, with planning permission to build residential homes, they can achieve a largely increased sale value than without planning permission for homes. Whatever else they might claim publicly, it is nakedly transparent that the Zoo’s motivations are being singularly driven by achieving the maximum sale value for their Clifton site.

The Zoo would probably counter that they’ve made an operating loss for four out of the last six years. They would also say they face inherent limitations by not being able to expand beyond the 12 acres of their Clifton site and that they’ve been suffering declining visitor number for several years now.

None of these points stand up to serious scrutiny.

- A charitable visitor attraction attracting well over half a million visitors a year and still making an operating loss is probably not being very well run meaning this could be turned around.

- It is true that they can’t expand beyond their existing footprint but that hasn’t stopped them from thriving for the past 186 years. Of course there has been much progress over the years about how to keep animals in captivity but that has developed over the years and they have the Wild Place to expand to for larger animals in the future.

- When you analyse the visitor numbers from the past 10 years of both BZG’s and the WPP, there are many fluctuations based on a variety of factors and there is nothing to suggest that visitor numbers cannot increase again in the future under the right leadership and a different strategy.

From everything I’ve seen, heard, read and talked to people about, I believe there are certain members of the Zoo’s senior management who are eager to ‘make their mark’ by creating a “new zoo, fit for the 21st Century” that has more to do with personal ambition than it does to do with conservation or what is best for Bristol Zoological Society.

Weighing up all the evidence, it is very hard not to draw the conclusion that Bristol Zoological Society’s management saw an opportunity to use the pandemic as a smokescreen to justify selling Bristol Zoo in Clifton in order to raise the money they so desperately wanted to invest in the Wild Place. By making the strategic choice to sell Bristol Zoo Gardens, they are taking a significant shortcut to raising £25-50m they had previously hoped to raise in a more sustainable and gradual way. But at what cost?

For the Zoo’s senior management, it would appear that the prospect of having £40-50m swelling the Zoo’s bank account to fast-track their grand plan was clearly too hard to resist.

The Zoo’s starting point for this decision was clearly, “we have an incredibly valuable asset which we can sell if needed,” so it’s therefore no surprise they have ended up in this place. If the Zoo had closed off that option from the start, it seems very likely they would have ended up in a different place which would not have involved the sale of the Zoo.

An immediate sale of Bristol Zoo is not critical and with time available, if the will and desire were there from the senior management and trustees to find another strategy and if their starting point was; “we must keep both sites open”, this undoubtedly could be possible.

Why can the Wild Place not be developed more slowly as a trade-off for keeping BZG’s open? There is no deadline about the rate of development needed at the Wild Place.

Selling Bristol Zoo Gardens is not an imminent necessity for the society. It is a strategic choice. But the true cost to the city of Bristol cannot be measured in ‘£’s. It will not be felt by the Zoo’s senior management or trustees. It will be felt by hundreds of thousands of the Zoo’s loyal members and visitors. People – young and old who live in Bristol and whose mental health and quality of life is greatly enhanced by Bristol Zoo Garden’s presence in the city. It will be felt by all those who love experiencing exotic wildlife in the heart of their own city.

Why This Shouldn’t Happen

The key points being pushed very hard by the Zoo’s management and supporters for their proposal are;

1. Much needed housing for Bristol including 20% which will be affordable.

2. Free public access to the gardens.

3. 38% increased biodiversity of the site.

“Much Needed Housing”

If more homes are so necessary in Clifton and Bristol, why not start building on the Downs as well? How about turning Clifton Observatory into someone’s home with wonderful views over the Suspension Bridge? Our city parks? There’s a lot of space at Ashton Court and Blaise Castle that you could develop for housing? Where do we draw the line? When do you start undoing what makes the city what it is?

Surely we can all agree that some places are just too important and valuable - in a strictly uneconomic sense – to be turned into housing estates? These spaces are great assets to all of our mental health, they help us find perspective in the busyness of modern life. Do we want housing developers whose primary motivation is profit to get their hands on these spaces that belong to all of us?

Bristol Zoo is not officially a public space and is classified as a ‘brownfield site’ but we can all see that it is anything but. What would the Zoo’s founders think about this site being turned into a housing estate?

‘Affordable’ housing

'Affordable' is a relative term and in an extremely expensive area like Clifton, the 20% of ‘affordable’ homes will still be well out of the reach for the majority of those seeking to acquire their first home.

Free Public Access To The Gardens

If you look at the Zoo’s plans, only about 20% of the site will be available to the public.

And approximately 42.5% of the existing trees will be removed, including the herbaceous border.

If the Zoo’s plans go ahead then the site will be owned by the developer and the proposal is that the ‘free’ public gardens will be paid for by an ‘Estate Service Charge’, paid for by residents.

Does anyone seriously believe that residents of this exclusive housing estate are for very long going to tolerate their significant ‘estate service charge’ to pay for ‘free’ public gardens? Despite the management plan’s stated intent that this will be ensured in the planning permission, planning law can be changed. Whether it is in 5, 10, or 20 years time, it seems inevitable that residents will tire of their substantial service charge paying for the upkeep of public gardens and ultimately, they will close to the public. When I asked directly, the Zoo can offer no guarantee that the gardens will stay open to the public in the long term.

The Zoo’s proposal feels like something most of us will have encountered in our daily lives; a good plan immediately disintegrating upon making contact with real life.

The Zoo says with a smooth sale, it envisages the gardens being closed for approximately 5 years. For any one familiar with the concept of; however long you hope something might take; double it, or for anyone who has ever watched Grand Designs - and that which doesn’t take into account potential and long planning delays - we could be looking at the site being closed for up to 10 years with much of that time it being a building site.

38% increase in the biodiversity of the site

This assertion has been strongly challenged by the Bristol Tree forum who say;

- An unworkable version of the metric for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) has been used (BNG 3.0) for calculating Urban tree habitat. BNG 3.1 fixes this and should be used instead. This shows that the trees growing on the site account for over 70% of its biodiversity.

- The applicant’s proposals will result in a net 22% loss of biodiversity rather than the 38.6% gain they have stated.

When you look at the disparity between the public rhetoric and the detail, one can only draw the conclusion that the Zoo are trying to shoehorn their proposal through planning and are intentionally obfuscating the full details from the wider public.

The Economics

This decision seems to have been made based on principles which an accountant would apply to any private business they were advising. But Bristol Zoo is not just another private business. It is a quasi-public, iconic and historic, internationally recognised institution. A charity with noble aims for aiding conservation, the natural world and countering climate change. Therefore the same accounting principles should not be applied. More imaginative solutions should have been – and still can be - explored and found to ensure the sale of BZG's is not necessary that go beyond the traditional a + b = c.

Whilst I understand that The Zoo is not a public body and does not receive public money, it is also not a private business. If for example, the NHS or Department for Education was run strictly like a business, most accountants would undoubtedly conclude; “this is not affordable / this needs reforming / we need to make cuts / sell off our assets etc.” But the public sector cannot be measured in straightforward inputs and outputs in the way a private business is.

Whilst not strictly falling into either category, the Zoo is surely closer to the public sector? Not just inputs and outputs. Not just about a + b = c. Bristol Zoo Gardens is so much more than that. Intangibles. Magic. A Charity. The true cost of selling Bristol Zoo cannot be measured on a spreadsheet.

As idealistic as this may sound, when we live in a world where last year’s Premier League wage bill was £1.5 billion, where Bristol’s annual GVA is in the region of £20 billion, the financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown – whose offices are only a couple of miles away from the Zoo – declared post-tax profits of £296m for one year in 2021, where Lloyds Bank - who have a significant presence in the city - declared post-tax profits of £1.7 billion last year alone, surely it is possible to raise £25-50m pounds from a variety of sources across the next 20 years – if not a lot sooner! - so this iconic charitable institution with its mission of saving wildlife and fighting climate change can give future generations of this city and beyond, another 186 years of amazing up close wildlife experiences, memories, conservation and education, in addition to the Wild Place? The two sites and the contrasting experiences they offer compliment each other perfectly in the same way that ZSL’s London Zoo and Whipsnade do.

Beyond Economics

Bristol Zoo moving from the heart of Bristol to South Gloucestershire and replacing it with a luxury housing estate will not unravel the tapestry of this city but it will significantly diminish it. If you rip a living and breathing institution out of the heart of a city, it is going to cause trauma. And the clue is in the name; Bristol Zoo. Bristol Zoo is one of the very few reasons many people of all backgrounds, ages and incomes come to Bristol. Have the Zoo become so focused on their mission of ‘Saving Wildlife Together’ – incredibly admirable though that is – that they have slightly lost touch with the fact that their roots are in Bristol, as are the majority of their members and visitors. Their presence in the heart of Bristol, genuinely means something to the people of this city.

My sense is from having spoken to many, many people – Zoo staff, volunteers, other members, visitors, friends and family that the Zoo has no idea about the strength of feeling out there about it closing for one simple reason; they haven’t asked. Whilst some people would understandably like to see the larger animals move up to the Wild Place in time to have larger enclosures, I have yet to find one person who thinks that the site being turned into a housing estate is a good idea. All who I have spoken to wish the Zoo could find a way to stay open in one form or another. I want future generations to experience what I and millions of others have experienced up until now.

You can put a £40-50m price on the value of the site, but you can’t put a price on giving many more generations of young people the proximity to wildlife in the heart of their own city.

Accessibility

If you currently want to visit the Zoo and live in Bristol, it is very easy to walk, cycle, get the bus or scoot. And if you live outside of Bristol, a train to Temple Meads and then the No. 8 bus up to Clifton is also very straightforward.

The reality is that Cribbs Causeway is relatively inaccessible and not especially inviting if you live in the city and especially if don’t have a car, which is widely encouraged in this day and age. It is not even in Bristol.

Whatever the Zoo may hope, there is no question that the vast majority of people who will visit the Cribbs Causeway site – as they do now - will arrive by car. (Look at The Mall where almost all visitors arrive by car). This seems entirely at odds with the Zoo’s target to become carbon neutral by 2035.

Another of the Zoo’s targets by 2035 is;

Engage and connect with more than 800,000 visitors and members per annum

As of 2019 - ie. pre-pandemic - the society across its two attractions was already attracting over 800,000 visitors, Bristol Zoo with 512,934 and the Wild Place with 317,031. Is it realistic that anywhere close to those 500,000 visitors to Clifton every year are going to get themselves out to South Gloucestershire by means other than car travel? How will the Zoo become a carbon-neutral organisation – with a much greater emphasis being placed on car travel to reach its site? Next to no one will be walking to Cribbs Causeway and very few will be cycling or scooting.

All the time – and I visit the Zoo a lot - I see parents with their children dropping in for an hour or so after school. At 3pm the children are in the classroom and 30 minutes later they’re walking past western lowland gorillas on their way to see the seals get fed. An hour after that following a short walk, cycle or bus ride and they’re at home having their tea. As a member of both BZG's and the WPP, I have been to the Wild Place many, many times and I rarely, if ever, recall seeing children in school uniform dropping in after school.

Anyone involved in education or booking coach travel will know that the cost of coach hire has increased exponentially post-pandemic. Closing Bristol Zoo in the city and moving out to South Gloucestershire will put a trip out of reach for many children who live in the inner city, both in terms of prohibitively expensive coach travel for school trips and family visits on the weekends and during school holidays when the added difficulty of getting out to Cribbs seems likely to put many people off visiting.

If the Society’s Charitable Objectives, Mission and Vision are (or were) to advance;

· The public understanding and the conservation of wildlife and the natural environment, and the scientific study of plants and animals.

· Saving Wildlife Together with the vision for wildlife to be part of everyone's lives and for people to want to, and be enabled to, protect wildlife now and for the future.

· The operation and ongoing development of Bristol Zoo Gardens ('BZG') and Wild Place Project (WPP') as centres for wildlife conservation and as a popular visitor attraction which educates and entertains the public.

How can it be argued that closing BZG’s is anything other than putting up barriers for many people who live in the city – young and old - who may otherwise have visited the Zoo in Bristol and engaged with and been inspired by these noble aims?

Jobs

The Zoo claim their strategy will protect jobs but the reality is that closing the Zoo is resulting in many Zoo staff losing their jobs.

Environmental

As previously stated, the Zoo claim their planning proposal will result in a 38% biodiversity increase on the site but this has been strongly challenged by the Bristol Tree Forum who having used a different metric, believe the proposal will actually result in a net 22% loss of biodiversity.

The proposal will also result in a loss of 42.5% of the trees on this nationally recognised botanical site. The Zoo’s own website says;

The gardens at Bristol Zoo contain one of the UK’s most important collections of plants. There are unusual trees, shrubs and plants from around the world, such as the monkey puzzle tree, tree ferns, wollemi pine and the purple-berried flax lily. You can also see a plant collection that was grown and sown by the people of Bristol that achieved National Collection status; a first of its kind.

We have carefully combined colour and texture to create stunning displays all year round. You can see this in the formal setting of the spring and summer beds and borders, and in the less formal arrangements of the rock gardens and exotic sub-tropical displays.

It’s thanks to over 170 years of nurture and gardening artistry, that we’ve established these 12 acres of such rare beauty and outstanding variety.

In 2008 Prince Charles said in a speech in Jakarta;

“Forests…are in fact the world’s air-conditioning system….and we are on the verge of switching it off.”

How can the Zoo – a charity dedicated to fighting climate change and promoting conservation - possibly justify destroying any of their gardens – 42.5% mature tree removal and “170 years of nurture and gardening artistry” against the backdrop of Bristol being a Green Capital and the current climate crisis?

Solutions

As I stated before and from looking at the figures, the Zoo did not need to close imminently, rather this a strategic choice that has been made. But planning permission hasn’t been granted, the site hasn’t been sold so the opportunity remains for us all to persuade the Zoo think again and reopen. Here are some options I genuinely believe it could look at in order to keep Bristol Zoo open;

1. A more multi-layered and pragmatic approach to conservation

Currently the society’s unquestionably admirable target is “to grow the proportion of species at our zoo with targeted conservation action to more than 90%”. This is ambitious and substantially higher than any other Zoo in the UK, with the highest currently standing at 60%. Having this fixed approach as a starting point to the Zoo’s species plan and conservation work combined with the fact that any new animals coming into the Wild Place have to fit into the ‘Biomes’ concept, immediately precludes adding collections of lots of popular and marketable animals. Could the Biomes concept be relaxed and the 90% target be lowered, at least for now, say to 65% (still the best in the country!) and traded off to have some more marketable species, bringing in increased revenue which could then be directly invested into the Zoo’s conservation work around the world and help sustain the two sites simultaneously. Maybe not perfect for the purist conservationist but by losing one thing, you gain many others.

For example, these species are all either endangered or critically endangered and highly popular to visitors;

- Sumatran and / or Amur Tiger

- Asian Elephant

- West African Lion

- Asiatic Lion – already at Bristol Zoo but currently not coming to the Wild Place because doesn’t fit into the targeted conservation target.

These are examples of popular but non-endangered species that don’t currently fit into the Zoo’s targeted conservation plan;

- South American Fur Seals are not endangered but anyone who has been to Bristol Zoo will know that they are one of the most popular animals on site. But just because they are not endangered, that doesn’t mean they can’t help engage people of all ages about plastic pollution in our oceans, rising sea levels and climate change.

- Meerkats are not endangered but they are another of the most popular animals in Zoos. Visitors love to see them and this interest and affection can help attract more people to visit the Zoo, informing and inspiring a new generation of people who care about wildlife and the natural world.

2. You don’t get what you don’t ask for – a highly energetic and ambitious fundraising campaign to Save Bristol Zoo targeting members, visitors, Bristolians and beyond, businesses both local and national and wealthy donors / philanthropists. Focus especially on big businesses and wealthy individuals with an affiliation to Bristol, the main selling point being, “get involved with our Saving Wildlife Together and climate change mission and you can be associated with and remembered for this historic coming together to help this iconic charitable institution give the city another 186 years of close up wildlife encounters, conservation, education and memories.”

3. Christmas Festival! - explore the idea of annually generating lots of extra income with a month long Christmas Lights festival at the Zoo inspired by similar events at Stourhead, Longleat and Westonbirt to name but three. This would obviously be subject to whether it was appropriate for the animals after dark but if it was, visitors having the opportunity to visit the Zoo and see the animals after dark in an environment of beautiful and extensive Christmas lights could be highly profitable on an annual basis.

4. VIP Experiences – having recently visited Longleat for a VIP tiger experience and then done some approximate calculations, I calculate that they must gross in the region of £175,000 annually from just that one VIP experience; they offer 17 VIP experiences in total and must make millions each year from them. If the Zoo ansd the Wild Place were to adopt this idea – especially if they were to keep the lions, add in tigers and elephants for example as well as the bears and the wolves - then even though it is not directly comparable to Longleat, once again, another very obvious revenue stream to explore.

5. Special Events – having read through the Zoo’s financial accounts since 2012, it is noticeable how many extra events they used to offer throughout the year from ‘Family Friendly Fireworks’ - ‘Film Night’ –‘Sunset Specials’ - ‘DinoZoo’ - ‘Fright Night’ and ‘Winter Wonder Zoo’ which all were highly successful and contributed significantly to the Zoo’s income. This approach seems to have been almost entirely abandoned in more recent years – why? - but surely if it were readopted with renewed enthusiasm and drive from the Zoo it could bring in significantly more income.

6. Engage meaningfully with ‘Our World Bristol’ and find a way to work together. The starting point for this is; we must keep Bristol Zoo open as a visitor attraction. Well placed sources have told me that The Zoo’s original idea pre-Covid was to gradually relocate its larger species up to The Wild Place but retain Bristol Zoo in the city for smaller animals – meerkats, monkeys, seals, penguins etc - with Bristol Zoo in Clifton still very much part of the society’s mission of Saving Wildlife Together. Why not now work with Our World Bristol and create something extraordinary together. A blend of the existing Zoo and an exciting new concept of an Augmented Reality Zoo, maintaining the existing gardens and the site as a visitor attraction in the heart of the city with its focus being on engaging as many people as possible in the society’s Saving Wildlife Together mission and alerting as many people as possible – both young and old - about the threat to all of our lives of climate change. New investment helping to regenerate the site from a consortium of wealthy but good intentioned investors and notable local experts, imagine what could be achieved together! The Zoo will not get all the money up front as they would from a sale and may need to develop the Wild Place more gradually but if you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, there is clearly great potential and opportunity here for an amazing collaboration between the two organisations. Finding a new way to do things, recognising the strength of feeling and love for Bristol Zoo and the desire for it to remain, being imaginative and finding another way forward.

Solutions and Conclusions

Bristol Zoological Gardens are hallowed ground in this city. I believe they contribute positively to anybody’s mental health who visits them. As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety myself, I can say first hand that their presence in the city makes a huge difference to my mental health on a daily basis in a way that the Wild Place does not.

They have an intangible magic that you feel when you move around them, whether that’s on a crisp autumnal morning in the children’s play area against a backdrop of orange and yellow leaves, at Christmas as you make your way back from the warmth of the Meerkat house along the lakeside boardwalk illuminated by fairy-like lanterns, in early springtime when the pink and white cherry blossoms bloom, or on a summer’s day when the gardens are in full and verdant splendour. They cannot be allowed to have 42.5% of the trees removed, lose 22% of their biodiversity and become an exclusive housing estate.

Whilst there is no shame in being ambitious and the Zoo’s strategy to 2035 looks fantastic on paper - being carbon neutral and attracting 800,000 visitors to Cribbs Causeway every year – achieving these aims isn’t something that can even be close to guaranteed for the obvious reason that it is still in the future and hitting these targets relies on a huge amount of factors which are entirely outside of the society’s control.

Focusing on the present and notwithstanding the pandemic, Bristol Zoological Society already attracts 800,000 visitors annually to their two sites, they already do amazing conservation work all over the world, they already do amazing education work here in Bristol, they already provide a fantastic and memorable visitor experience at both of their attractions. Bristol Zoo brings joy to people’s lives. Bristol Zoo brings joy to this city.

Although the Zoo’s senior management and trustees may believe that changing their position at this late stage would appear weak and no doubt be rather inconvenient, I believe it would show great strength of character and they would find themselves on the right side of history.

Bristol Zoo Garden's presence in Bristol, means something to the people of this city and brings joy to all who visit.

To quote Sir David Attenborough;

“No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced”.

Taking the Zoo out of the heart of Bristol can only mean that in the future, far fewer people will have the chance to experience amazing exotic and endangered wildlife and consequently, will not want to protect it.

Let’s all save Bristol Zoo Gardens, before it is too late.

Tom Jones is a professional musician who has lived in Bristol his whole life. He is a father

and proud member of Bristol Zoo and the Wild Place.