I've had a good deal of spare time on tonight's night shift, which makes for a pleasant change - so I decided to advance a little task I've been meaning to push forward for some time. I often find it difficult to work out whether there are any interesting zoos in a given area which I may be visiting or passing through, and I normally need to use at least three different resources to establish this in advance. For my reference, I've decided to plot any zoological points of interest on a map of the British Isles. It's a work in progress, but any suggestions, corrections and additions would be very welcome. I am looking to plot all open collections which can be visited by the public. Collections which hold only farm animals or common pet shop stock don't count. Unfortunately the initial map was lost, on which I had personalised and annotated labels, so the current set up with more cryptic labels is the latest reincarnation. https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1ey3pgCd5MY.kM8cYgGmXbis&usp=sharing
You're right, but zootierliste doesn't list all collections and many of those which are listed have their locations incorrectly recorded on ZTL. This makes the maps or 'radius search' functions much less helpful. The UK also has a very large number of falconry centres and farm parks which aren't usually classed as zoos. Falconry 'experiences' are even more common, held in private centres which aren't normally open to the public. It's sometimes difficult to establish whether a falconry centre is actually open to the public or whether they only run experiences, so that's one of the benefits of having the accesible places on a map.
I'd suggest removing Burnby Hall, as it does make a nice visit, but it is only one small aviary with some common pet species in and a lake with a lot of Koi Carp in. There is a small petting zoo in Newcastle-upon-tyne, in Jesmond Dene (I haven't visited as I ran out of time last time I was in Newcastle); also up in Newcastle there is the Great North/ Hancock Museum, which has some fish, invertebrates and reptiles. Thanks for creating this, it will come in useful!
Excellent work. A further development, if you were inclined, might be to take advantage of the various pin colours in Google Maps to indicate different types of zoos (falconry centre, aquarium etc) and perhaps, more subjectively, to distinguish the major, medium, minor and micro-sized zoos.
I would say that there are still zoo starved areas of the UK. As you'll be aware, the vast majority of these are little side collections with very few small species. I'm sure TLD would agree the north east could use a major general collection to the extent of Chester/London/Bristol etc
Thanks very much guys. It was one of the difficult ones I thought I'd include, mostly because someone thought it merited a listing on zootierliste. If only it had a pheasant or two to make it an easier decision! I've added your other suggestions - thanks; they're exactly the kind of places I'd never have thought of. What an oversight! Thanks Yes, I'd be happy to. Thanks. I'm struggling a bit with personalising these maps, it would be nice to colour code and list in a more convenient manner (perhaps alphabetically, or number the listings) - I'm just not sure how to.
It was added a fortnight ago on Macaw's request I believe There's a few collections labelled in my area which only keep domestics and/or petshop taxa incidentally: The Hancock Museum only displays cornsnake, ball python, bearded dragon and a tarantula as a matter of course; there is a temporary exhibition at the moment with a handful of more unusual invertebrates but I'd still suggest it is not worthy of being on the map. The Jesmond Dene Pets Corner only holds domestic sheep, goats and rabbits, along with a few budgies, cockatiels and pheasants. Tweddle Farm is only domestic farm animals - there used to be one or two exotics but these were disposed of when the collection was stripped of its zoo licence. Beamish Wild Adventure Park is an obstacle course, not an animal collection.
That was down to the fact that there appeared to be a few similar sort of places already on zootierliste . When I visited in September there were some other herps and a small collection of fish. I don't think I saw any tarantulas, but then it was a flying visit (literally killing 15 minutes).
Kew Gardens, Hobbledown, Warwick Castle and Legoland Windsor don't have any animals as far as I know. Missing: Monkey World/Donkey Sanctuary/Abbotsbury Swannery (includes a Trop House) - all in Devon; Bird of Prey Centre on Isle of Wight. There is a similar UK map produced by someone on FB via the Zoo Keepers Europe group. It was pretty comprehensive and also colour-coded (as has been mentioned above), but I couldn't easily find it. Included all the farm parks etc which also seem to be missing on your map.
Warwick Castle has a falconry centre (with a few nice things, as well, according to Zootierliste: http://www.zootierliste.de/en/map.php?showzoo=10001919 ). Hobbledown has quite a few animals, according to its website ( http://www.hobbledown.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/summer-2015-welcome-leaflet-LOW-RES-FOR-WEB.pdf ) - otters, meerkats, wallabies, rheas, mara, owls, parrots and pheasants among them. Legoland certainly used to have some sharks as I remember reading about them arriving but not sure if they're still there. EDIT: yep, Legoland still has at least a small aquarium: http://www.legoland.co.uk/Explore/Activities/Adventure-Land/
Thank you all for the pointers, additions and updates. I'll update the map once I'm back with my laptop. Maguari got there before me. Does the donkey sanctuary house anything other than donkeys? Any exotics or wild animals? I've not been keen to include collections which only house domestic animals, including many farm parks, children's zoos and sanctuaries. It sounds like that map may have been useful - a shame I never came across it.
WWT Caerlarvock should not be added to the map, as it has zero captive holdings; it entirely consists of protected wetlands and nature reserves.
