Campaigners calling for a rethink on the closure of Bristol Zoo are to hold another protest and march next week, as a crucial date in their battle looms nearer.
The ‘Save Bristol Zoo Gardens’ campaigners are planning to march from the Victoria Rooms at Clifton Triangle, up through Clifton to the zoo site on the morning of Sunday, March 12. Hundreds attended a public meeting last month in a church near the zoo in Clifton last month, and organisers of the campaign are hoping hundreds more will join the march next weekend.
The march is to take place just a couple of days before a crucial council meeting, which is due to discuss the plans to redevelop the zoo site, and could scupper any hope of saving the zoo itself. Bristol Zoo closed its doors to the public on September 1 last year, after announcing a major plan to concentrate its work at the Wild Place site on the edge of Bristol.
Read next: Campaign launched to 'save Bristol Zoo'
Plans were announced to develop the iconic Clifton Zoo Gardens site with 220 apartments instead. That project is expected to go before a council planning committee on Wednesday, March 15, although the decision date is yet to be confirmed by Bristol City Council.
Last year, a group of Bristol’s business, academic and creative figures proposed an alternative use for the zoo site, and the creation of an ‘augmented reality zoo’ attraction, while local residents living around the zoo site have more straightforward objections to the size and scale of the development itself.
Those two strands have come together in a Save Bristol Zoo campaign, which has questioned the zoo’s reasons for closing the zoo site, and said they have a growing number of employees, former employees and people associated with the zoo who say the zoo can be saved and reopened.
A public meeting of the Save Bristol Zoo Gardens campaign last month heard that the first step to do that would be persuading councillors and council officers to refuse permission for the plans to redevelop the zoo. If it’s given planning permission, then there would appear to be nothing standing in the way of the zoo’s move to Wild Place. If it is refused, campaigners say bosses at the zoo would have to be forced into a rethink.
There has been growing criticism from the Save Bristol Zoo campaign about the extend of the move of animals from the zoo site to the Wild Place location - with the campaigners saying that essentially the zoo's bosses are closing the zoo and redeveloping it for financial reasons.
In the face of that criticism, last week, Bristol Zoo shared more details of its plans for the Wild Place, including new CGI images showing plans for a central African forests area, which will be home to the Western lowland gorilla troop from Bristol Zoo Gardens, as well as a conservation learning campus for undergraduate and postgraduate study, where visitors will be able to see scientists at work. There will be a new entrance area featuring a red panda exhibit, as well as a gift shop and restaurant, Bristol Zoo said.
The zoo confirmed that 50 species will move from Bristol Zoo Gardens to the new site, including the blue-eyed black lemurs, the lemur leaf frog and the Corfu killifish. These will be joined by new additions from other zoos and aquariums around the world, such as two black rhinoceros, north African red-necked ostrich and grevy’s zebra.
But those behind the campaign say that momentum is building in Bristol to force the zoo into a re-think, and they hope that if planning permission is refused later this month, that could provide a delay which allows time for a re-evaluation of the zoo's plans.
Those taking part in the march are asked to meet at the Victoria Rooms at 10.45am on Sunday, March 12, with the march leaving at 11am, or join the protest as the marchers arrive at the zoo site at around 11.30am.
Read More:
- Bristol Zoo staff bid farewell as Clifton site prepares to close its doors for good
- Bristol Zoo's new look revealed for the first time in CGIs
- List of animals moving from Bristol Zoo to the Wild Place
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