Closure of butterfly centre in St Albans. St Albans-based Butterfly World sanctuary to close | Horticulture Week £27m Butterfly World 'could break even', staff say - BBC News
Closure of Butterfly World has been confirmed, despite petitions to save it Closure of Butterfly World St Albans confirmed by owners - News - Herts Advertiser There are two parties interested in taking on the colony of leafcutter ants, placement to be finalised in a few weeks
Sad, but this has had an air of inevitability about it for a while now. Maybe if they'd got funding for the biome things may have worked out, but i'd never seen the place busy even during peak season!
I visited this place only once, not long after it opened. To be frank, there wasn't much there when I saw it, but it was obvious it had great potential. I saw the sites of, and plans for, the proposed biome(s), and thought what a marvellous place it would be when it was finished, and I made a mental note to revisit again when the biome(s) was/were open. Sadly that day never came, and, as we know now, the ambitious plans never materialized. But I just don't get the figures. The report says that the original expectation was for Butterfly World to attract 600,000 visitors annually (which, of course, it never did). That's one hell of an estimate. But the owners even said that this was the minimum number expected, and they they hoped to attract up to one million visitors a year. Now I love butterflies as much as the next person, but one million visitors!!! For butterflies?!!! I doubt that butterflies exert such a pulling power. The owners are quoted as saying they needed 50,000 visitors a month to break even. We're not talking apes or dolphins here. I had no idea that butterflies and moths were so expensive to maintain.
