In the chatroom last night, myself and a couple of other users were discussing the concept that the UK is 'over saturated' with zoos. While that is a good thing for us enthusiasts, is it a bad thing for zoos themselves? Do the smaller/medium sized zoos draw away potential revenue from the bigger zoos and hold them back? For example, how many more visitors would Chester get annually if there was no Welsh Mountain, Twycross or Blackpool? Would there be a difference in visitor numbers? Personally I don't see it affecting it majorly, since I can imagine a fair amount of people that visit there 'local' zoo will also visit the nearest 'big' zoo - I don't think Blackpool or Welsh Mountain draw visitors away from Chester, for example, I'm sure the families etc in Colwyn Bay would make the trip to Chester to go to the big family day out zoo. What are your thoughts? EDIT: Sorry I couldn't explain it better, hopefully people are getting what I mean
Given there is certainly no shortage of would-be zoo entrepreneurs in the UK, I suspect there are no more and no less zoos in that country than the market will support. In economic terms, the correct answer to your question would be the last one, because the number of zoos will always be approximately one less than the number that is unsustainable at that particular point in time. That's how a market works. What I gather, though, is that you're concerned about market share. In the hope that you might be able to answer your own question, let me express it another way. Imagine you are a regular overseas traveller. Would you prefer that there were 5 large airlines operating out of Heathrow, each of which has roughly 20% of the market for flights in and out of London? Each of these airlines obviously has high revenue and a large fleet of aircraft to be able to fly so many passengers around the world, so each one offers a large number of destinations and an option between economy, business and first-class travel. The catch is, each of the five airlines goes to more or less all of the same places, and because they don't have a huge amount of competition, your fares are pretty high. Your alternative scenario is, let's say, 25 small airlines servicing Heathrow. Each one only has 4% of the market on average, so they don't have a lot of income and they cannot maintain large fleets. Each one tends to specialise. Two or three might mostly do flights to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, another couple might concentrate on the Middle East, for example. And because they probably have smaller planes, you only get the option of travelling economy. There is no room for business or first-class options. Perhaps you can see how this correlates to zoos. In the first example, a few big zoos - lets say Chester, Edinburgh, Colchester, London and Twycross, for argument's sake - are dominant and get the overwhelming proportion of zoo visitors to visit them. Each one has a large collection of animals and a range of different extra services, such as restaurants, special animal experiences, souvenir shops, zoo rides and so on. The catch is - by trying to be all things to all people, each of these zoos turns out to be quite similar. There are less spaces for animals overall, for example, which means that fewer species can be viably maintained in captivity. And if one of the big zoos has the latest popular species, the others better get them too or the big 5 might become a big 4. The 'small airline' example would be where you have lots of little zoos. None of them have the resources to be a dominant force and grab any more than their small local market as zoo-goers. As a result, what you see is on the one hand, less of the extra bells and whistles like zoo trains and multi-million dollar exhibits (these zoos only fly economy) but on the other hand, each one tends to do different things. So some zoos, like Dartmoor, become big cat specialists. Others, like Highland Wildlife Park, specialise in cold climate animals. Neither of these places are complete collections, but they do make for a more diverse zoo landscape. In reality, Britain is a bit of a hybrid of the two (as is Heathrow, for that matter, with some airlines offering lots of different flights, like British Airways, and others maybe only doing one route). You have some big, full-service zoos. And you have a lot of little zoos that do a few things on a limited budget, but get by and add some diversity to the zoo landscape. In Australia, the reality is much more skewed towards the the big airlines example. We have no more than six zoos in this country (excluding aquariums and theme parks) that can reasonably aim to attract 300,000 visitors in a year at present, and there are maybe four or five more that can attract more than 100,00. What that means, in part, is that our zoo collections are much, much less diverse than what you have in the United Kingdom. I hope all of that made sense and you can resolve your own view on the matter. I know what I'd prefer.
It did make sense - it isn't a concern really, just a concept I found interesting, the idea was taken from an American book I believe (can't remember, was mentioned during the chat and that's what kicked it off). This book had somebody say that the UK is over saturated with zoos, and that it's 'stopping the big zoos from being of an 'American-standard' world class.' I personally prefer the hybrid scenario - I'm glad my local is Chester as it's a good all-rounder collection wise, but then again I still love visits to other places that will have really odd species of birds, reptiles etc.
That book would be A Different Nature by David Hancocks, I believe? Hancocks seems to have the view that any zoo that cannot afford the magnificence of a Woodland Park Zoo or Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (notably, his two curatorial posts in the US) does not deserve to exist. He doesn't appear to understand how disastrous this would be for the truly AAA-rated zoos that he prefers, which would suddenly find they can sustain a LOT fewer species in captivity. There are a couple of people on this forum who share this view, or at least express very, very harsh views on less beautiful, capital-intensive ways of displaying animals. I have to admit, that can get grating after a while.
Here's one for everyone to get stuck into without the smaller zoos would the big zoos become over crowded with stock, as the smaller zoos take alot of the unwanted animals (none breeders) from the big zoos What would happen to these animals would they have to be put down and what about the concervation the smaller zoos do would the big zoos take these projects on. Who's to say people who would have visited the smaller zoo's would naturally go to the bigger zoos more often I think they would find something else to do closer to home.
The way I see it, there is little competition within the UK zoo community as long as zoos within a close radius of each other don't all offer the same thing, appealing to different visitors or holding different stock. Looking at my home county of Hampshire for example: you've got Marwell as the typical big zoo for those who want a 'traditional' day at the zoo, and from this centre-piece you've got the smaller collections nearby, like satellites, occupying different niches. Hawk Conservancy with birds of prey displays for those who want something more specialized but still exciting, NFWP as a small native wildlife collection that neatly slots in with a whole day exploring the New Forest, Blue Reef Portsmouth as part of a day on the Historic Waterfront, and so on. And this is generally the case across most of the UK from what I can see, with some exceptions. But in somewhere like Devon and Cornwall, which is overloaded with wildlife attractions (with another opening next year), they can get away with it because of the extra number of tourists the counties get during the holiday season. Using this theory might be a way to explain why Port Lympne has struggled financially and seems to be taking very desperate measures recently. With sister park Howletts very near by, an almost identical collection and an easier topography, families with young children will be much more inclined to go there. Just my musings on the matter.
I don't feel there's too many zoos in general. There are, perhaps, a few too many very small collections, with only a handful of different species represented in them. If the species were particularly rare or exciting, I would let it pass, but they always seem to have the same animals ad infinitum. Please - no more meerkats, short-clawed otters, Burmese pythons, ring-tailed lemurs, red-eared terrapins, green iguanas, or farmyard-type animals.
1. Devon and Cornwall have got a lot of wildlife attractions, but only one major Zoo- Paignton. All the others come into the 'smaller zoos' category I think. Its worth remembering the 'true' tourist season in the Uk is actually pretty short, about 3-4 months, with a 6 week peak during school summer holidays and minor ones at halfterms. I'm not sure how much zoos in the West Country or other holiday areas owe their longterm survival to the tourist trade, though they obviously do have an advantage here over non/less tourist-type locations. But zoos in non-tourist locations, particularly the ones centred in or near large urban areas, often benefit from more regular round the year attendance- zoos like Chester, Twycross, London, Dudley etc must surely do better than places like Exmoor, Newquay, Dartmoor WP etc in the winter months. 2. I think Howletts and Port Lympne are an interesting and unique case. Two 'rival' parks owned by the same organisation, but so similar and close together that they must draw from the same geographical populations for their visitors-as you said. Neither of them are near particularly large urban areas, or in major tourist regions either. An unusual situation but one which came about I think because of the original 'private collection' ethos of both (Port Lympne was originally purchased mainly to give more room for expansion of the Howlett's stock)- I am not sure if it was planned to open Port Lympne to the public from the start but if so, it wasn't the ideal choice of a site.
I agree. It made a nice change to see the smooth-clawed otters in Colchester a few weeks ago. Apart from seeing sea otters in Rotterdam in 2007, it was a long time since I saw an otter that wasn't an Asiatic short-clawed otter. At one stage, London had three meerkat enclosures - I know that it's a popular TV animal, but it is common in captivity and in the wild and is kept for commercial purposes, not for conservation, while other true mongooses seem to be uncommon in zoos. I can't really see the point of keping farm animals in zoos - I'd prefer them to be kept in Rare Breeds Centres. When I visited Basle in 2001, it seemed that the farm animals took up about 30% of the zoo. I preferred the my visited to the Children's Zoo in Los Angeles, which included gerenuks and banded duikers. To be honest, I'm also getting bored with western lowland gorillas and most subspecies of tigers in zoos. There are about 9 times as many captive western lowland gorillas as are needed to save them from extinction, while the other three subspecies are represented by two female gorillas at Antwerp. Similarly, captive tigers are over-represented in zoos, once again for commercial reasons. I don't know if reducing the number of British zoos would reduce the number of over-represented species, but I suspect that the victims would be the under-represented species, which could be bred and returned to the wild, but have too few supporters.
I think the issue of having too many zoos is a bit of a double edged sword. As was said above, by having more animal parks around means they have to be a bit more creative to make their collection stand out from the crowd. This then means we have more diversity across animal collections, and some rarely seen species turn up in a few parks - for example, the rscc had the only pair on new guinea singing dogs (are they still there?). If collections closed, the remaining ones would probably pursue the crowd pullers to keep numbers up and, as correctly pointed out above, the result would probably be fewer zoos keeping the more common animals at the expense of the rarer, more unusual species. Relaxation of some of the licensing surrounding wild animals has meant former farm parks and theme parks have been able to keep the usual zoo suspects like capybara, tamarins, wallaby etc - e.g folly farm et al. These collections can provide a role in housing retired breeding stock so the bigger zoos use there space more effectively. I dont think these mixed collections pull crowds from the big zoos - i think actually the 'wild' animals here are used to pull in more crowds into former farm parks that may otherwise struggle. That said, some like noahs ark may well undermine the more established colledctions like longleat and bristol zoo. Im not sure if these latter 2 collections have seen a drop since bibleland opened its doors, its possible that having more animal parks has just opened the eyes of the local public to visiting zoos more often. Or it could just be that the closure of westbury-on-trym wildlife park, cricket st thomas and sleepy hollow has meant noahs ark just grew to fill a hole. Another side point is that if we have more collections around, more children visit animal parks and potentially can be educated about conservation and ecological protection which can only be a good thing for the future. If the crapest parks will mention conservation in some capacity! What, however, i do think is ridiculous is the situation in kent. Within 9 miles you have howletts, wingham wildlife park and the rscc. 9 MILES!! In addition, 17 miles down the road is port lympne and a few miles north is wildwood. You could argue they all have different focuses but the bottom line is they are all animal colections with a lot of overlap and families dont usually check the individual species list before planning on which park to take their 2 year old for a day out. Unsupprsingly, the aspinall foundation has been in financial trouble for a few years, resulting in some (dubious) dramatic changes and developments in a desperate bid to get more visitors in, the rscc has massively downsized and nealy closed completely to visitors now, and i have been told wingham wildlife park is not currently profitable. As I have said before, i strongly feel that the AF should more all its stock onto the prtlympne site where they have 600acres+ of room and either mothball and turn howletts into a closed 'behind the scenes' facility. If the 3 parks management had any sense, they should have merged the rscc, wingham and the empty howletts onto the 100acres howletts site, where they could have run a proper, lareg zoo with birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, invertabrates with all the usual zoo amenities. Located close to canterbury, it would have a parge catchment area and would be very different from port lym's collection. As it stands, all of kents wildlife parks have had financial troubles and the next few years could be intersting to see them battle it out. If wildlife parks do start cometeing fro trade and some go under, then it will be clear there ARE too many zoos.
Its true Kent is a very remarkable situation, with that cluster of zoos/parks all so close together. I am rather surprised the smaller ones manage to get any visitors (other than specialist interested people),as being so close to Howletts that is the obvious destination for family 'days out'- Elephants, Gorillas Tigers- the big draw species. The problem with Port Lympne is that its enormous area and steep topography isn't really satisfactory for visitors- as the recent and apparently contentious changes to a sort of 'Safari-style' Park have finally shown. Howletts is smaller, flat and much more compact and visitor friendly. Also, I think to move species like all the Gorillas, Elephants, Big Cats etc to Port Lympne would be hugely expensive in terms of new enclosures. But as these nearly all duplicate the species already at PL, I suppose they could just close it and keep most species as they are. Personally, I for one would be very sorry if Howletts ever closed its gates again to the public,, whereas with PL it wouldn't bother me half as much, particularly since the recent changes.
On the subject of small and medium-sized zoos (I'd class Welsh Mountain in the latter category), I'd much rather visit them than most of the big zoos. The only big zoo I have any desire to visit these days is Paignton, and there I spend most of my time admiring the zoos own avian exhibits and attending the bird shows. I spent full days at Wingz, Tropiquaria, Exmoor and Paradise Park the other week - in fact I was waiting outside both Wingz and Tropiquaria before opening time and left only when the places closed. I am a big lover of Filey Bird Garden which at present has an exemption from requiring a zoo licence. Long live small and medium-sized zoos!!
Hmm..having visited all the major zoo nations extensively [apart from France where ive only done a dozen zoos or so] i would say that the UK has no more zoos pro-rata than anywhere else and is perhaps closest to Australia in the profile of its zoos[i.e. lots of small to medium sized ones].And Australia has a very similar amount of zoos to Britain[150 to 180] BUT the population is roughly a quarter of the UK.In fact there was a very interesting article in IZY vol.44 showing that 36% of over-15s visit a zoo once a year in Aus...a figure beaten only by cinema visitations[65%].Clearly the UK has someway to go to match these figures and the Netherlands must be somewhat similar.So no,we dont have too many zoos but we do have a lack of good big ones[as does Australia].
Don't mind the size of a zoo providing it is a good one like Twycross, good representative collection, with good facilities or even a decent smaller Zoo like Hamerton, worth checking out for some unusual species, many of the poorer Zoos have been weeded out with one Tiger,one Lion, the usual mix of Monkeys,Parrots,Wallabies, but not worth a special visit, two spring to mind a Midlands Wildlife Park and one in Wales, both now closed, obviously smaller Zoos do not have the resources of a Chester, Whipsnade or London, but they have a part to play like Hamerton with it's Tiger Cats!
It does seem that the balance is way off - some areas have lots and others almost none. I always thought if I could open a zoo maybe Alnwick would be a nice location.
Yep, I think that sums it up. Kent has a lot of collections (it seems faintly absurd for a place the size of Sandwich to have two collections with Smooth-coated Otters within ten miles of its centre). Similarly, there are a lot of quality smaller collections in the South-West and East Anglia. Conversely, between Twycross and the Scottish border Chester is pretty much on its own. The dearth of collections in Yorkshire and the North-East is stark. There's not much in South Wales either. Personally, if I were to look to open a zoo anywhere, Brecon would be the place; an army town, with plenty of well off pensioners and families without many places to visit.
