Twycross zoo is a registered charity which means they get money from all over the cities around them. It is also a financially self supporting from visitors admissions fees. All of the income helps the animals to survive in the zoo. The money they get also helps to research and development. The other thing they get money from is that if someone has sponsored a particular animal. People can buy one or several shares in an animal of their choice. They also have their own website built so that it known all over the world. This would definitely bring them a lot of money because people around the world who love the animal would want to donate some money for their animal and to keep the Zoo run day by day (it would pay some money for the salaries for the workers).
Zoos support conservation projects financially by donating money and equipment. For instance, every year the Federation of Zoos of the United Kingdom and Ireland launch awareness and fund raising campaign (Twycross Zoo is a member of the Federation). Money has been given to help Tigers in the wild, promote primates and help native species.
The Twycross Zoo has an unusual history as when it was set up the founders did not plan to create a major tourist attraction. Therefore the location has chosen for its convenience and space in which to house the current small collection of animals not any scientific, social, economic or environmental reasons. However from my own knowledge I can say why it has the zoo located in that area. Miss Mollie Badham moved to twycross in the 1960’s and bought Norton grange which is now used as the zoo’s administrative centre. The chimpanzee 500,000 visitors a year and formally teach 26,000 pupils a year. Communicating the importance of conservation and biodiversity is an important part of what they do at the zoo.
As their animal collection began to expand and the zoos popularity began to grow the impact upon the local community and environment became more significant. The Zoo is located near several major motorway links and is within one hour’s commute of many major towns and cities. Around 9 million people live in that area and make up around 90% of their total visitors. The A444 runs directly pass the Zoo and as the Zoo entrance does not have filter lane the traffic can build up for miles during the summer months. New developments at the Zoo will be addressing this problem and easing congestion on the roads surrounding the zoo.
Twycross Zoo employees around 120 full time staff the vast majority of who live in the local area. This number can nearly double during the summer months when we recruit a large number of seasonal workers to deal with the extra influx of visitors. Many of these seasonal workers are young people and students.
Twycross Zoo is working towards becoming a completely sustainable site and as carbon neutral as possible in an attempt to reduce any negative impact they are having on the local environment. All their decomposable waste is composed and then reused on site and the waterways system will be able to clean much of their water supply. We also work to encourage local wildlife onto the zoo site such as waterfowl and small mammals and they are working on a local project to encourage otters to breed in the area.
The education service they provide for school:
The twycross zoo has its own professional education department. They have professional education department which there task is to interpret the zoo for schools, universities and most of them are giving information to general public. This includes giving talks, writing lively information pack, and supervising research to designing and producing signs and graphics for the zoo. The zoo offers lively interactive teaching sessions. It lets the students to observe, discover and to experience the living animals. The zoo allows pupils to develop skills and concepts about their world and their responsibilities to it.
The important animals at the zoo:
The most important animals in the zoo are the primates. The important animals are all of them according to the Twycross Zoo. The Twycross Zoo has separated them into 3 different categories. They are Mammals, Birds, and reptiles/amphibians. These are some of the important animals:
Gorillas, tigers and elephants as well as smaller and more obscure species are most important for Twycross Zoo as it is becoming extinct.
Pygmy chimpanzee: One of the endangered animals around the world.
This is one of the primates that shares 99% of human DNA. They are mainly found in the tropical forest of Africa. Their numbers in the wild are not know as they are becoming more endangered. The Twycross Zoo has a breeding programme and they have produced four babies in recent years.
They have this western lowland Gorilla in their zoo. They are known to be found in Tropical rain forest, swamp forest and clearings. This means that they live freely in the zoo as they can live in the open area (clearing). They have been mostly hunted for food, trophies and ash to make ashtrays. Their population are become more extinct. The Twycross Zoo have had 2 successes, they have 2 more gorilla because they bred.
Asiatic Lions also found in the Twycross zoo. Their habitats are grassland to desert area. Twycross zoo is part of the Asiatic lions breeding programme, they aiming to build up more Asiatic lions. Twycross zoo has had two successes, once they had two born cubs and then again 3 more. There are only 300 of them left in the wild so it is important to breed them as much as possible and then put them back in the wild.
There are 4 species of elephants: Indian Elephant, Ceylon Elephant, Sumatran Elephant and Malaysian Elephant. The one that Twycross Zoo has is the Asian Elephant. Asian elephant has smaller ears compare to the African elephants.
Breeding programme:
In order to operate a successful captive breeding programme, the history of each animal should be recorded. These records are then made available to studbook holders so that they can analyse the captive population and make recommendations on animal transfers and breeding. The breeding programme has made some of the success in breeding some of the South American monkeys. The zoo has successfully bred these animals and trained them to survive in the wild before releasing them back into a protected forest. The Twycross Zoo has successfully bred a lot of other animals and has trained them and then put them back the wild life.
