The Wild Place Project will become known as ‘Bristol Zoo Project’ from next summer, as part of the project to move from Clifton to the edge of the city.
Bristol Zoo bosses are announcing the new name for the visitor attraction at Easter Compton with a photocall involving hundreds of people shaping out the letters of the new name at Tower Meadow in the Wild Place today (Saturday, April 22).
The zoo says the new name ‘reflects the charity’s past and future’, and the announcement comes just days before its controversial plan to redevelop the Bristol Zoo Gardens site at Clifton goes before city councillors.
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Bristol Zoo Gardens closed in September last year, almost two years after the announcement was made that the trustees of the charity that runs it wanted to focus their future at the Wild Place site, which is just the other side of the M5 junction at Cribbs Causeway.
The closure of the zoo and the plans to build 196 new homes around the gardens site in Clifton have been hugely controversial, with a ‘Save Bristol Zoo’ campaign organising public meetings, rallies and marches.
It will be down to councillors on Wednesday to decide whether the zoo’s plans to redevelop the Clifton site get the go-ahead, and planning officers have recommended the application be given permission. Zoo chief executive Justin Morris told Bristol Live last week that the zoo site in Clifton was no longer fit for purpose, and outlined the benefits of concentrating on the Wild Place site in South Gloucestershire.
Today he said the announcement of the new name marked ‘the start of the journey’. “We are on a journey,” he said. “Wild animals are under threat of extinction and we think zoos have an important role to play to address this ecological crisis, which is why we are investing in our 136-acre site.
“It won’t be quick. We are finalising the designs and construction is planned to start in 2024. Changing the name of our site marks the start of that journey,” he added.
The zoo said the new name was chosen after polling visitors, employees and volunteers, and ‘reflects the journey that Bristol Zoological Society is on, investing in the site which will be home to some of the world’s most threatened species’.
Work on ‘Bristol Zoo Project’ is planned to start in 2024, and that will include new visitor facilities, play areas and new homes for new species, including Critically Endangered black rhinos, red-necked ostriches, and Endangered red pandas and mangabey monkeys.
“Bristol Zoo Gardens in Clifton closed in September last year, to allow us to create a new Bristol Zoo at Wild Place Project,” Brian Zimmerman, Director of Conservation for Bristol Zoological Society, said.
“At what will soon be known as Bristol Zoo Project, 80 percent of species will be linked to our conservation work around the world, living in spaces that more closely reflect their natural habitats,” he added.
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