I personally feel the opening Summer 2020 is very ambitious. To this date, there is no confirmed site, no planning in place for any change of green belt to brown belt land, no plans for any exhibits and no building work started at all. Single Zoo's seem to take 12-18 months just to build one exhibit and that's after months of planning. I would be very surprised if this place is anywhere close to opening in 2020.
Do you have a link to the website please? I've just tried to google it and I'm not having much luck finding it (I'm probablt being thick - it has been a long day!) I do think the opening date seems a bit ambitious but I get the impression the initial collection will be quite humble - so if they can get the site sorted it may not be so unrealistic.
There's some strange terminology in the website, they intend to be a "moral beacon" they'll have a "social science project" aimed at "at risk people" such as "singer mothers" . They sound like the Jehovah's Witnesses.
I think it's more likely the case that some of their funding might be reliant on providing some kind of social good. If my memory serves me well, Twycross similarly "tweaked" their aims to get (at least some) funding for their Himalaya/entrance projects (hence why it's prior to the tollbooths and why they trumpeted the building as being many things to many groups of people when it opened -cafe for truck drivers, meeting place for ethnic groups in local community, etc.).
Not seen any truckers dropping in for a coffee but at the height of summer (when I rarely visit) there's a good cross-section of ethnic diversity visiting (nothing unusual given the nearby-ness of the fantastically ethnically mixed Leicester and also mixed, but less so, Derby) -not seen any community events though.
Quite correct. I would expect a planning application on this scale to take several months to prepare, two or three months to be considered and - if granted - subject to a long list of conditions, many of which would need to be met before work could begin. No such thing as "brown belt" incidentally; it would require either a decision that the development was acceptable within the Green Belt or that there are very special circumstances which would justify such development within the Green Belt or a revision of the Green Belt boundary to remove the site from the Green Belt. None of these would be straightforward.
Another article. states their initial funding is 8 million pounds. that sounds like a lot of spending money, but its not much for a full scale zoo. I wish them luck Plans for a new Manchester Zoo announced
You never know - it's certainly possible to build a pretty good enclosure for a lot cheaper than one would think! This one for Pallas Cat cost £80.
This sounds like a very exciting project. I'm surprised at the degree of scepticism given how little information has been made public. I look forward to seeing how it develops and visiting the zoo when it opens.
£80! that couldn't have covered the cost of the materials let alone labour. Was it built by people doing community service?
Yes when you consider it must cover many things before the first animal enclosure is constructed: 1. Land purchase 2, Parking facilities 3. Entry/ticketing building 4. Administrative and staff offices 5. Roads & visitor paths 6. Service area 7. Landscaping (even minimal) 8. Equipment, vehicles, etc. So the plan to begin with small steps may be a modest Madagascar building with attached outdoor enclosures. The challenge will be to convince the public that this facility is worth re-visitng.
Since I was the source of the original report about this enclosure (Highland Wildlife Park - Report on HWP Tour with Douglas Richardson) I think I ought to clarify this point. This enclosure for Pallas's cats at the Highland Wildlife Park was originally constructed as an aviary for choughs. When I first visited HWP in 2008 it held a pair of Himalayan snowcocks. I was given a tour of the Park by Douglas Richardson in 2011, arranged through ZooChat and reported in the thread mentioned above. At that time the enclosure had recently been converted for a pair of Pallas's cats and their subsequent kittens. He told me that most of the materials required came from the Park's stores or were recycled, so the total extra expenditure was only £85. I presume that the work was done in-house and so there was no extra cost for labour. £8m will buy lots of fence posts and wire mesh: but surveying, designing, providing services like power, water and waste water drainage all add to costs, then add in the expenditure for materials and labour for any buildings that are more sophisticated than wooden sheds and £8m seems a much more limited sum.
If you ignore all the old 'stuff' surrounding it, and the roof, ceiling, insulation, lining and path - I can see around £1000 in new materials, regardless of labour. The species label could have cost £80 or more on its own...
I assumed it was something like that: in-house labour, salvaged or donated materials etc. None of which (other than, maybe, some donations) would apply here.
