Visitors 'vital' to helping with conservation work at Whipsnade Zoo

This bank holiday weekend, coinciding with many Easter school holidays, is expected to bring more visitors to ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire.

While the visitors can enjoy a walk around the site and observe endangered-in-the-wild species, the Zoo relies heavily on the visits to fund their conservation work.

Head of Zoological Operations at Whipsnade Zoo, Matthew Webb, said: "For every zoo that does conservation it's fundamental, we need people visiting the zoo which helps conservation in the wild, and we do conservation at ZSL, we run lots of projects."

"If we didn't have visitors coming to the zoo we wouldn't be able to do that, so it's of vital importance for us and for animals in the wild to visit the zoos."

The conservation work undertaken allows keepers and zoologists to analyse species, understand their needs, look at their environment, and in some cases, return them to the wild if the threat in their natural habitat can is no longer present or can be managed.

An example of specie returned to the wild is the Partula snail, whose population was wiped out 35 years ago, and which was recently returned to its native islands of the French Polynesia after an intense breeding programme at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire.

Collections include not only endangered species, but critically endangered ones and some on the brink of extinction.

While the little ones enjoy seeing the animals in their enclosures, for the Zoo it's an opportunity to educate them from a young age around the importance of respecting biodiversity, nature, habitat, and understanding the reasons a species may be endangered.

All these elements were incorporated in the new Monkey Forest, unveiled earlier this week, where children and adults alike can learn about the loss of habitat to palm oil and other factors driving species to extinction.

"It's critical for us to educate younger generations, so as you come to this new exhibit there's not only the animals to see but we put play trails on the routes and that play is designed to tell the story about the animals that we look after in this exhibit", added Mr Webb.

While learning about the species is essential, it's important for the Zoo to primarily look after their animals, with a special little festive treat this Easter.

Mr Webb said: "We'll certainly put out some different enrichments for them probably over the Easter period, some of these animals love to play about with lots of different enrichments devices."

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