Visiting a New Zoo

MONGOOSE LEMURS AT WILD PLACE

26th July 2013

Bristol Zoo has owned the Hollywood Towers estate for many years. It is just to the west of the M5, opposite the Cribbs Causeway shopping centre. Bristol Zoo itself has only a small urban site, so it can only hold a limited collection of animals, particularly as modern welfare standards mean that animals are now given far more space than they had in the bad old days. There have long been plans to develop the estate as Bristol Zoo’s animal park in the country – the west country equivalent of London Zoo’s country park at Whipsnade.

There were ambitious plans a few years ago, but the current government’s austerity cuts to regional development aid put plans them on the back burner (the same happened to Chester Zoo’s plans for a big new African exhibit). But they have built some new exhibits, modernised some others that were previously used for holding stock off-show and adapted some farm buildings to provide facilities for visitors. When everything was ready, Wild Place opened on the 22nd of July.

I called in on the 26th because I was passing and I was curious. I knew that there were only a few animal exhibits, but I was surprised to see that there were lots of play areas for children, nice gardens and woodland walks too. I felt that at the moment Wild Place is aiming at families with young children who want to spend a day in the country with plenty of activities for the kids and some animals to look at too. I hope it attracts plenty of visitors so that the animal collection can be expanded.

For the zoo enthusiast the best exhibit is the lemur walkthrough. It is nicely themed with some Madagascar theme displays in the first compound: pygmy goats, a schoolroom, a market stall and a wonderful trough for washing hands (a hygiene requirement after visiting the lemurs). The second compound holds ring-tailed, red-fronted and mongoose lemurs, with indoor housing and an open area which will look much better when the planting has grown a little. My favourites were the pair of mongoose lemurs. They are smaller than the other species but this pair was very active and they had the charming habit of keeping in contact by grunting softly to each other. Here is the female striding along.

The male enjoying a bit of aubergine (I think). Both photos taken with my 105mm macro lens.

A leaping lemur! This photo was taken with my old 18 to 70mm Nikkor zoom lens, which was the kit lens for my old D70, it was at maximum focal length and has been cropped too - I was using it for some wide angle shots of the collection for the ZooChat website, but I couldn't resist trying to capture the action.