New vision announced for London Zoo
Monday 18 July 2005
London Zoo has announced its vision for the future at its site in Regent’s Park.
Following the official opening of our new African Bird Safari, ZSL today revealed that its flagship collection in London will be renovated over the coming years to offer visitors the chance to see some of our amazing animals outside their traditional enclosures.
In early 2007, London Zoo will open a brand new African Rainforest area in the heart of the zoo; this will be home to gorillas and black and white colobus monkeys and other primates, alongside a selection of endangered birds and reptiles.
As a charitable organisation we are actively fundraising for this project, find out how you can help . The new enclosure will cost £5.3 million, with a further £500,000 committed to our field conservation projects to help protect gorillas in the wild.
“Our vision is to create an immersive and inspiring environment for our visitors to experience the natural world up close and personal,” commented Chris West, Zoological Director.
“We are moving towards more naturalistic environments for the animals that will allow visitors to the zoo to feel like they are experiencing something really special.”
The new plans for the zoo follows the success of our Meet the Monkeys area, which allows visitors to come face to face with our squirrel monkeys, and our African Bird Safari which is home to beautiful lilac breasted rollers, comical Van der Deken’s hornbills and other amazing African bird species. In both of these new habitats visitors can go into the animals’ environments and be inspired by the natural world.
“We would like to be a catalyst which inspires people to protect the natural world and its inhabitants, and we really feel that allowing people to be immersed in the animals’ environment is an amazing and fun way to achieve this goal,” explains David Field, Head of Animal Care.
