I just finished reading the book "Wonders Never Cease: Edinburgh Zoo into the 21st century" and it was an interesting and yet fairly basic overview of the zoo. The book was published in 2006 and the final chapter contains information about the proposed development plan that never became a reality. There is even a colourful map with the 4 main biomes that were part of the Master Plan: Oceans & Wetlands, Tropical Forest, Woodlands and Grasslands. I remember reading various reports about the massive amount of money that was part of the investment, and also about the housing development scheme that never saw the light of day. It would have been exciting to see orangutans, elephants (not at the zoo since 1989) and manatees added to the collection and the biome idea is something that Indianapolis Zoo follows to great effect in the United States. What happened to curtail plans in Scotland? Is the plan officially dead in the water or could it be resurrected one day? Did the zoo instead focus on giant pandas and penguins and abandon all hope of a biome-focus? What is the next major project for Edinburgh Zoo?
That vision of the masterplan is all but dead. RZSS needed to sell a parcel of land to fund the masterplan, but this fell through. It was budgeted at around £60 million.
