Hi everyone, hope you can help me? Im trying to find a zoo in England that has large Pandas, does anyone know where a good zoo is, where I can see these lovely animals and get some great photos? In the east Anglia region would be perfect!! Thanks for your help Animals and Buildings from around the UK
I hate to tell you that there are currently no Giant Panda's in the UK at this time. . There are plans for Edinburgh Zoo to have some in the next few years but it may not go ahead.
Hiya, Thanks for your comment. That would explain why I have struggled so much in trying to find a zoo that has them . Next mission, is now to find Urangutans, any ideas? Cheers chris
jersy, chester, paington and i think one other zoo in the uk has orang-utans, the closest pandas to us are either Madrid ZooQuarium, Berlin zoo (but be quick, he's old and when he (BAO BAO is his name) dies, it is thought he will not be replaced) or Vienna zoo
...Monkey World? Edit: And also, according to ISIS: Blackpool, Colchester, Dublin, Dudley and Twycross.
Chris, if you're in Cambridge then Colchester is definitely the nearest zoo with orangutans. Take the M11, then the A120 at Stansted practically all the way to Colchester. It's about an hour and 20 mins. Whatever the criticisms of Colchester's style of enclosure, they have arguably one of the most impressive males there, Rajang, who is 41 and massive, with huge cheek pads and very long hair. An 8 year old male, Tiga, also recently moved there from Twycross ......... which would be the next nearest zoo with orangs to you (A14, M6, A444 - 2 hours. You can tell I've done these journeys more than once !). There are 4 orangs at Twycross, a 20 year old male, 2 mature females and a young female (grandma, daughter and granddaughter).
I think it's fine for people to criticise a collection - and I mean that in the strongest terms, which has consistently acquired new species and has a proportionally high number of exhibits compared to similarly-sized zoos......I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but the whole 'well they can't do everything at once' argument implies a struggling zoo trying desperately to improve the conditions for the animals they've acquired. I've nothing against Colchester, but I wouldn't say they are leading the way in exhibiting pachyderms, great apes or big cats particularly. So when someone makes a comment that they wouldn't want to see giant pandas there, I think I understand what they mean. Ages ago, I read a quote by the director saying that the public want to see gorillas and dolphins, but that he doesn't consider them suitable species. So maybe Colchester understands its current limits too? To their credit, giraffe aside, they haven't really taken on any large species that weren't already there, and they have made their lives considerably better over time. London could easily house Pandas, and if they had been able to negotiate them at a discount to avoid the resulting PR backlash usually reserved only for London Zoo you would have seen the mappins or cat terraces transformed before you blinked I'm sure. But they didn't so it's going to be Edinburgh by the way things are going.
I'd also far prefer London to get pandas than Colchester, although I think Edinburgh is actually the best choice at the moment. London wouldn't need to expand to have the pandas, instead a current area would be re-developed (such as the mappin terraces). I couldn't see colchester doing a very good job with the pandas like disastorous the orangutan forest.
soz 2 bump this thread but i felt i needed 2 post this when i went 2 the zoo last summer, one of the keppers said it was 95% likely
