Today on Skip the Queue, we’re joined by the team behind Bristol Zoo Project, one of the most ambitious zoo relocations in the UK. After more than 200 years at Clifton, Bristol Zoo is moving to a 136-acre conservation site to create the next generation of visitor experiences, placing conservation and animal welfare at the heart of the attraction, and it’s opening its doors to the public this week! From designing immersive, multi-species habitats to creating educational spaces that inspire visitors of all ages, the team is redefining what a modern zoo can be. In this episode, we’ll explore the challenges of moving iconic animals, ensuring their welfare, and designing an environment where both animals and visitors thrive.
In this episode, Andy Povey is joined by Matthew Philpott, Head of Marketing at Bristol Zoological Society to discuss the transformation of Bristol Zoological Society and the move from Bristol Zoo Gardens to the larger, conservation focused Bristol Zoo Project.
They explore how the new site prioritises animal welfare through natural habitats, the challenges of relocating animals including gorillas, and the creation of immersive environments like the African Forest. The episode also touches on changing visitor expectations and the evolving role of zoos in global conservation.
Key Topics Discussed
Show references:
Matthew Philpott, Head of Marketing at Bristol Zoological Society
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Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Andy Povey: 00:00
Hello and welcome to Skip the Q the podcast for people who power visitor attractions, brought to you by merac. I'm your host, Andy Povey and today on Skip the Queue, we're joined by the team behind the Bristol Zoo Project, one of the most ambitious zoo relocations in the UK. After almost 200 years at Clifton, Bristol Zoo is moving to a 136 acre conservation site to create the next generation of visitor experiences, placing conservation and animal welfare at the heart of the attraction, building spaces that are much more in keeping with the local environment and the animal's natural habitat. This is all about building the environment that works for the animals and then inviting the guests in rather than asking the animals to exist in a world that suits the humour visitors.
From designing immersive multi species habitats to creating educational spaces that inspire visitors of all ages, the team is redefining what a modern zoo can be. In this episode, we'll explore the challenges of moving iconic animals, ensuring their welfare and designing an environment where both animals and visitors thrive. So, hi Matt, before we dive into what we're going to be talking about for the majority of the podcast, I wonder if you could just do a brief intro both about yourself and to Bristol Zoological Society Empress Project.
Matthew Philpott: 01:18
Thanks for having me, Andy. So, yes, I'm at Bristol Zoo Project at the moment. That's our conservation zoo. We're a charity. Bristol Zoological society is around 190 years old. I think it's the fifth oldest science based zoo in the world and I've been here for a couple of years now. It's been pretty fascinating and high paced.
Andy Povey: 01:40
I can imagine.
Matthew Philpott: 01:41
Yeah, quite pleasing time to be here. I've done a few visitor attractions in the past. Was head of marketing for Hestakimbe House and Gardens independent charity. Before this, much of my career was in retail, so before I moved to the Southwest, I worked for Majestic Wine as kind of head of marketing. So I've gradually worked my way to kind of, I wouldn't say a more fun product, but hopefully doing a bit more good in terms of saving wildlife and making an impact on the planet.
Andy Povey: 02:08
Very good. So you've been with the Bristol Zoo for two years. The charity's been in existence for almost 200 years, hasn't it? For 186 of those years it was located right in the centre of Bristol.
Matthew Philpott: 02:22
Yeah. So the charity was set up as Bristol Zoological Society, as you say, best part of 200 years ago. It was kind of just shortly after London Zoo, so that's about 10 years older than us. An Area in Clifton, which wasn't really central Bristol at the time, I don't think was kind of funded to be bought by a number of kind of local families and kind of zoological enthusiasts and scientists. And what was Bristol Zoo Gardens was set up and was run as the main zoo for the charity for hundreds of years. And it kind of evolved through time. But I think one of the things that we do really well and is, you know, increasingly important for us is evidence in the past is significant conservation work. So we've always had a kind of a balance between the zoo, whether it's at Bristol Zoo Gardens or Bristol Zoo Project I'm at now, which engages people with these amazing animals and the need to save them, but also funds the conservation projects that we practically run around the world. So we're present in four continents, I think nine countries. We have about 30 actively led conservation programmes and we have a whole team on site who help to facilitate and run those conservation programmes. So there's a real link between what we're doing in the UK and Bristol Zoo Project and conservation around the world to save these species. And that's something that's obviously changed some what in the hundred or so year, hundreds of years that zoos have existed. But I think it's really important now, particularly for us. But, you know, I know lots of other zoos or people listening, you know, for zoo to have a real purpose in life. Why are the animals here? So we opened Wild Place Project at the site Bristol Zoo Project was at now in, I think it was 2013. So we ran dual sites for kind of quite a decent period of time, for a couple of years, well, 10 years. They kind of complemented each other, but it's not really sustainable to run two zoos very close together. And we had a decision to make in terms of our strategy and going forward as to how we remain kind of sustainable in terms of an organisation, have the biggest impact we can, but also reflect all the changes that have happened with us and need to happen in the industry generally in terms of welfare and space and what the best place for us was. So, as you touch on, in 2022, we closed Bristol Zoo Gardens to the public and we are effectively, we're still a little bit. But we're quite close to the end, transitioning all of our operations to Bristol Zoo Project and investing heavily in that site. It's 10 times the size of Bristol Zoo Gardens in terms of the place, so it allows us to do a lot more that we would want to in terms of kind of Space and creating natural habitats for animals to enjoy and for our visitors to enjoy and experience kind of something much closer to the wild, where, you know, where these animals would exist. So that's quite a long answer to your question as to where we are. We haven't sold Bristol Zoo Gardens yet. It's quite close really now we've got planning permission and the vision is that Bristol Zoo Gardens, actually the park kind of gardens within there, become public for the first time for the people of Bristol. There is a bit of housing development around the outside, it's quite sensitive and we retain one of our conservation projects is for the Avon Gorge and Downs and we retain a presence for that kind of conservation project to engage people with local conservation work in the site. So that's quite exciting itself. But what that allows to do is to inject funding into Bristol Zoo Project and turn that into the conservation zoo of the future, kind of pushing boundaries. That is exactly what we set out to do. So, yeah, it's quite a lot of change for a 200 year old zoo.
Andy Povey: 06:39
I mean that's huge. So when. Let me unpick some of the stuff you've just shared with us. So back in 2013, was it when the Wild Place Project opened, was this always the vision?
Matthew Philpott: 06:52
Yeah, good question. I asked that in my interview. I was like, is this the master plan? Is it a 20 year master plan? And this is the culmination of it. And I don't think at the time that was how, you know, our leaders saw it. I think it's something that's kind of evolved kind of more recently. So we set out a new strategy, just kind of, it's during kind of COVID I think, actually, which set the wheels in motion for the decision to close Bristol Zoo Gardens and to invest in Bristol Zoo Project as it now is. But basically the history of the two sites is that Wild Place Project, where I am now Bristle Zoo Project is on an old mansion estate just off the M5. It was kind of effectively gifted to Bristol Zoological society in the 60s. I think it would have been quite an interesting time to be here. But it was almost a secondary facility for the zoo. So animals might have been quarantined here. There was behind the scenes breeding, kind of conservation, breeding programmes. Some of the wonderful flowers and plants for Bristol Zoo Gardens were grown here and you know, there were storeys of animals in the like the grand drawing room of the house and all sorts kind of going on was obviously the 60s. So it was probably a little bit more lax terms of what you're allowed to do. But we as a society decided to kind of invest in a kind of a, you know, a new kind of slightly different kind of experience for a zoo and wild place project. And that's kind of grown quite significantly over the years with, you know, lots of additions in the amazing space we have. So the last, kind of. The last big thing we did before opening African forest, which I think I'll talk about probably quite soon, was our bare wood Habitat in 2019. What we've got in this site that we don't have in Bristol, in the middle of Clifton, the middle of a city, effectively, is lots of really natural habitats. So the site's wonderful. It's got wildflower meadow, it's got open grassland, it's got ancient woodland. And so it gives a lot more variety in terms of how we can create habitats that reflect animal's natural environment, but also is kind of beautiful for a visitor to kind of experience. It's kind of almost halfway between maybe a National Trust property and a zoo. So for bear wood, for example, that's a kind of a walkway through this ancient woodland. And in that we've got brown bears, a pack of wolves, wolverines and lynx kind of within that kind of habitat that they would have lived in Britain thousands of years ago. And it tells a storey about the danger of habitat erosion and the fact that we no longer in the UK have these species. And that's because we've got significantly less woodland now than we did a thousand years ago. And there just isn't a place for these animals to live generally. So it helps us to tell a conservation storey, but it also is much more immersive for the visitor in that you're going into their world, you can see bears under a woodland canopy. I think one of my highlights is, you know, you see bears climbing trees. When do you see bears climbing trees? So you could be walking through a. Walk through, look to your left and see a bear kind of eyeballing you almost, you know, not all the time, it's not guaranteed, but there are moments like that which you couldn't replicate in a city centre, as you might imagine. So it's kind of better, we think, for. For the animals. They get huge amount of space and lots of natural behaviour, like foraging for food, for example. But also we think it's much better for our visitors. And what we're looking for with visitors is, obviously, we want to give them an amazing experience and something that builds memories and they think about forever looking a bear in the eyes is one of those. But it makes a deeper connection between that person and the animal and the need to save them in the wild. And what we're looking to do is create that engagement so that people leave and not only do they have an amazing day, but they want to do something, take action, or they at least understand that there's a need to preserve their natural habitat for these animals. And it might be they go on to be a future conservation leader, or it might be it just changes one behaviour and they think differently or they just know that there's a need to save the animals we work with. So that's, I think, one of the special things about the place we are now in that we've got so much more variety to create that experience for people.
Andy Povey: 11:44
I love that idea. You're inviting humans into the animals environment rather than what used to be the way where we would be bringing animals into the human environment. Fantastic. That really sort of distils for me why you've done this. And we've all been to London Zoo. You see the small enclosures that were appropriate in Victorian times when it was built, and now they're listed. So it's very difficult to do anything about the structure, but it's not where society thinks the animals. It's not the natural habit for the animals to be in. Very good, Very interesting, thank you. So what's the guest feedback been like about the movement? That's a significant upheaval, isn't it?
Matthew Philpott: 12:31
Yeah, it's been, I mean, as you might imagine, moving, you know, talking about London, you know, Bristol Zoological Society and Bristol Zoo Gardens is an institution as well. Listed buildings are kind of, you know, a really important hub for Bristol in that particular area of Bristol as well. And not everybody likes change, even if it's for a good reason. So I wouldn't say necessarily from our visitors, but, you know, making a big change like that is, you know, probably does split a crowd. Right. So, yeah, you know, we've got so many supporters from all over, you know, our members, donors, you know, trustee. We've got so many people who see the vision and are incredibly supportive of the journey that we're going on still in terms of kind of making that shift away from an old Victorian zoo that wouldn't be fit for what a zoo needs to do in the future. But at the same time, you've obviously got people who mourn that history and something that was very special. I get it. I was a member of Bristol Zoo with my little one who's not so little anymore since we moved to Bristol. And it is a wonderful place and it did so many good things and it was pretty progressive as zoos go. But there's only so far you can go in a 12, 13 acre site in terms of welfare. So I guess to answer your question, you know, it's kind of in terms of, you know, people generally in the area, it's, you know, divided opinions, I think in terms of our visitors to Bristol Zoo project, you know, some totally get what we're doing and love the kind of the wildness of our site and the fact that, you know, animals are so well cared. I mean, they were always kept well cared for at Bristol Zoo, but you know, that they're in an environment that really stimulates them as best as possible and replicates their natural environment and they love the fact that, you know, it's more natural experience. You might have to work a little bit harder, you might have to hang on for a couple of minutes or you might have to look around a bit and wait for that moment that you see a brown bear. But for others, I guess where, you know, we'd mentioned before, everybody knows what a zoo is, don't they? Or they know what a Victorian footprint looks like. And this is not one of those. And if you have to get your head around, you know, you have to work a little bit harder, you have to walk a little bit further to get that kind of satisfaction of seeing this incredible creature. It does take a little bit of persuading for some people, you know, that we tend to, again, a bit like the move of the zoo. Our visitors split into halves. We have, you know, a large proportion love it and totally get it. And they just bowled over and then a few, it just didn't meet the expectations of what they have as a zone. We've somewhat compounded that by calling ourselves Bristol Zoo Project. Well, when we closed Bristol Zoo Gardens with a view to selling it, we obviously had to make a decision on the name of Bristol Zoo and we had Wild Place Project. And I wasn't there to make the decision at the time, but it was quite an obvious one. Bristol Zoo has such history and from a marketing perspective and brand awareness, it would be madness to lose that name. It's an bit of an institution, you know, it's known to just move to a new name, whether it was World Place Project or something else. And we kept project because it means a couple of things. It talks about what I've explained in terms of kind of that progressiveness and the need to change, but it also reflects on the fact that we are still a work in progress. You know, there's still investment to come in the site and it's not a finished thing. But by calling it Bristol Zoo, rather than a sanctuary or whatever, you know, other options, it does set expectations, because we've called ourselves a zoo and everybody knows what a zoo is, right? So I think we've got a bit of work to do in terms of kind of awareness of what we stand for and what our place is about. One of the things we change, I mean, not that selling an institution isn't enough. One of the strategic decisions we made when we moved to Bristol Zoo Project, or moved all our operations to Bristol Zoo Project, was to think really carefully about our species plan and what animals we have here. One of the driving reasons for that, and I touched on earlier, was we strongly believe there has to be a really good reason to have animal here. And that is, that's to create the connection between the public and kind of an amazing creature, but also the fact that they need our support in saving them and they actively need help. So, at the moment, 85% of the species at Bristol Zoo Project are threatened in the wild. A lot of them are critically endangered or endangered, and they're part of active conservation breeding programmes, which provides a population of animals which are necessary should that animal become extinct in the wild. So there's a really good reason to have most of the animals that we have here. And our strategy is to get to 90%. And the other thing that we've done is seriously, we significantly reduce the amount of animals in our species plan by about a third, again, with the reason for focusing on those which need our help. And so, for me, the really important thing for our visitors and what we're trying to achieve is that the reason the animal is here is to engage the public with the need to save them. And it's much easier to engage somebody if they can see how special they are in their natural environment. Not everybody's lucky enough to be able to travel the world and, you know, see some of these amazing creatures. And so I think there is still, you know, personally and obviously the wider organisation does that. There's a really genuine reason for zoos to exist still, and that's conservation. So when we think of, you know, ourselves as a charity and organisation, we're a conservation project first and we operate a zoo, but our purpose in life is to save wildlife and we do that through, you know, a number of means, one of which is operating Bristlesea Project.
Andy Povey: 19:21
Very interesting. I love the conversation or the discussion about whether you change the name. We acquired a 30 year old company with a well known brand name not that long ago and we have the same debate, do we change the name or not? And one of the conversations we had, I was actually driving my Skoda. If VW can do it to Skoda, should we try and do the same kind of thing?
Matthew Philpott: 19:50
Yeah, no, I'm with you. I think, yeah. From my days in retail, I think there's, you know, sometimes businesses, organisations try to be too clever, create something new and they lose a lot of the value that's been stored up in a strong brand. And yeah, so I think, yeah, even though I wasn't part of that decision, I think it was the right one to make. But yeah, I think our job now is. One of our many jobs is the team also did, and the press did an incredibly good job on Bristol Zoo Gardens closing. I generally have a working assumption in comms and marketing that people will take one point, if you're lucky, they'll take one key message. And that key message hit home really strongly. Bristles E Gardens closed and that was fab for that final year of Bristlesoo Gardens. But we've got an ongoing challenge actually. We didn't close, we just moved and we've got a larger incredible zoo to visit, which is Bristol Zoo and it isn't closed. And we've been working for years to kind of build awareness because as I say, people like clear, kind of simple messages, don't they? And the one of closure was the one that a lot of people took. Some of the moments we've had more recently, the opening of African forest habitat. They really help us to kind of build back that kind of understanding of who we are and what we're doing.
Andy Povey: 21:33
Yeah, I mean, it's an evolution, isn't it? It's a journey. So I'm intrigued. How do you move a bunch of endangered animals? I mean, how far, for those people who don't know Bristol, how far is the distance between the two sites?
Matthew Philpott: 21:49
So not very far, five or six miles or so. Not. I mean, thinking about that, running two zoos five or six miles apart from each other probably wasn't the best business decision anyway. But forgetting about that in terms of the animals, which is far more interesting. So there were thousands of animals at Bristol Zoo Gardens. Some of them have moved over, but a lot of them, as I kind of talked about our species plan, was totally revisited and a number of them didn't fit with that vision, that of why they should be here. So all of those animals move to other zoos around the UK and Europe or wildlife sanctuaries, and the movement of animals is quite heavily regulated. I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to talk in detail over it, but whether it's a gorilla or a lion or a flamingo, you can't just stick them in the transit van and send them to another too. There were thankfully quite a lot of restrictions in terms of legislation. So we have animal registrar who did and does an amazing job in terms of the planning of those animal moves. And particularly when Bristol Zoo Gardens closed to the public, there was a period of time where there were hundreds of animals moving from us to other zoos and that's quite an undertaking to do in terms of those that moved over, probably the base. Best case study is our troop of Western lowland gorillas. We still own Bristol Zoo Gardens and we operated from the site for a number of years when it was closed to the public. So our vets team were there up until almost this week. Our higher education and conservation teams were still there. The relevant animal teams were still operating from Bristol Zoo Garden. So our primate team still looked after our trooper gorillas in the same habitat that they were when we opened to the public, behind the scenes waiting for a new space to be built for them. So the Gorillaz was a huge piece of work. We've got about an 8 minute video on our YouTube channel documenting the move of the gorillas, which is kind of quite a lot of behind the scenes, quite special moments, if I'm honest with you, and amazing to see. But the team planned this move for. Well, effectively, since we knew that were going to have to move the gorillas. For about two years it's been in the planning and some of the things that they had to think about in doing that were preparing the troop to move individually. So for a lot of animals, but for the gorillas, the keepers kind of had a routine on crate training. The animals generally move in the crate for their safety and so that would involve kind of for those individuals who'd be moving in crates that to be present in the habitat and for them to kind of gradually acclimatise, explore it, have rewards around it. So it felt kind of comfortable and natural. Which means when the time came to move them, the idea and what happened was those individual gorillas would choose to effectively move themselves, go into the crate and then get moved Though. So the way our kind of head of the primate team and kind of the person who orchestrated all of this, who, yeah, I wouldn't want it been me, but it's incredibly knowledgeable. The way she put it was they will choose to move themselves. We're not going to make them do it. They will orchestrate it and they will move when they're good and ready. So a lot of the team's work was in preparing the gorillas to get ready for that Thor for some of the troop, the larger ones in particular, then they would need to be anaesthetized for their safety. So our team do injection training generally anyway, which means the gorillas choose in turn for reward to take an injection. Which means it's much easier for our vets to kind of keep an eye on them, do any health cheques without it being intrusive. And again, that's always kind of at that animal's kind of discretion, you know, if they chose not to put the hand out, that would be fine. So there's loads of work going on the background to prepare the troop for the movie, even though they obviously don't know what's going to happen. And then in terms of, I guess the other big piece of work is preparing the habitat they're moving to. So the African forest habitat that I mentioned had to be built, which was quite an undertaking. It was purposefully positioned in the site in an area of natural woodland, which, as you might imagine, makes building work more challenging. So we made life quite difficult for ourselves in wanting to create a natural habitat as opposed to purely man made kind of space for the gorillas. And the main reason for doing that was because gorillas would live in a forest habitat in the wild. And having a natural tree canopy is really important for their welfare. And the reason went to such lengths to give them that was, well, I can see it outside now if I wander out at lunchtime. They climb trees, they forage, they eat blossom, they feel comfortable under that kind of tree canopy because it's their natural environment. So there was. That was the huge piece of it, basically, you know, a two year piece of work to create this huge space for them. It's about five times the size of Bristol Zoo Gardens in terms of the space the guerrillas have. Wow. So in conjunction, we've got two bits going on. Creating the habitat and preparing the troop in terms of the actual move. Some of the other things to think about, we had police escorts for the guerrillas as they made it up the road. Not generally because of the danger of the public. Although, you know, probably wouldn't want a guerrilla escaping on the M5. But because we wanted to make the transition for the guerrillas as smooth and quick as possible. So should there be traffic we could find a route round it. And the whole move was built around the welfare of the troop and making it as minimalist kind of impact on them as possible. So yeah, police escorts kind of from Clifton up to Bristol Zoo Project. You can imagine the things they have to think about in terms of kind of the actual transport of a S gorilla and the load, for example of the van, the size of crates. So as I mentioned, we moved them in crates. They're all different shapes and sizes from silverback down to a five year old male gorilla. One of the things that we did that was quite special, we had support from a local business ies to create something that had never been done before and didn't exist to just buy off the shelf a paired crate for a foster mother and the infant while they're juvenile so they wouldn't be separated at any point in their journey. Which again is best for the gorilla. But took quite a lot of doing to kind of create something like that.
Andy Povey: 29:16
I can imagine.
Matthew Philpott: 29:18
It's nice to see that paired crate and the extent that the team went to just make sure that it was as smooth as possible for the gorillas. So on the day of the move it was, by the looks of it, probably about 10 hours of constant work for the team and it involved our keepers, animal team. Much of the rest of the organisation, like our facilities, landscape teams, all helping with the move. A lot of experts came in, our whole veterinary team was working. Other vets, specialist vets came in for it and each some of our ex keepers who've moved to other zoos around the country even came back for that moment to help. Yeah, it's quite an emotional watch. If anybody does want to look at the video, it's kind of quite a special moment and it tracks their journey into Bristol Zoo Project and then some of those first moments where they explore this amazing new habitat, go out on the island for the first time, climb a tree for the first time, all these kind of things. So yeah, it's quite a lot of planning to make sure it goes smoothly and yeah, credit to the team, not at all for me in terms of pulling it off.
Andy Povey: 30:31
We'll definitely stick the link to that video in the show notes.
Matthew Philpott: 30:34
Thank you.
Andy Povey: 30:35
It sounds like it's something that. Well, I really want to see it and I'm sure that my kids.
Matthew Philpott: 30:40
Yeah, there were a lot of tears from everyone, the team, and a lot of people have seen it, I think, in terms of that kind of. That kind of emotion, of having achieved what we'd set out to do kind of years ago and, you know, them successfully kind of getting there. You know, there's a lot of pitfalls in the complexity of something like this. I don't think anything's been done on that scale before in the uk, at least, anyway.
Andy Povey: 31:04
No. Very good. And it must have been difficult not to turn that into a marketing exercise for you.
Matthew Philpott: 31:12
Yeah, I mean, I suppose we see it more of a storytelling exercise. You know, we, as you touched on, you know, we've made some quite bold moves and we need people to get on board and come along on that journey with us. And so I think some of what we did in terms of kind of capturing those moments were really to help people to kind of see that vision and become emotionally invested as we are, in the need to change and to kind of move forward. My day job is to market and bring footfall to the site, though, obviously.
Andy Povey: 31:48
Of course.
Matthew Philpott: 31:50
And so, yeah, you know, I kind of see it as a. It's quite a nice marketing challenge because every visitor that comes to site contributes to our charity and to our conservation work. And so it's not a dark art, as I see it, you know. You know, we obviously do market and we have a commercial kind of element to what we do because that, you know, in much funds are charitable work. But, yeah, it's a little bit different. I don't know, I don't want to name any. I'll name me at Majestic Wine. Selling wine. Yeah, you know, brings a lot of happiness to people, but probably didn't, you know, make a difference to the world. I can feel quite kind of at ease marketing what we do now to people, makes a difference. So. So, yeah, so. But. But, yeah, we, you know, it helps because these kind of moments, you know, they do stir up emotions and, you know, it brings press coverage and, you know, live on TV moments, I should say. There are four other amazing species in African forest and I've talked about gorillas because they're quite iconic and they were such a big part of what Bristol Zoo has done for a long time. I think we've cared for gorillas since the 1930s. That was quite a big moment for people to see that. And for our members and visitors who hadn't been able to go to Bristol Zoo Gardens for a number of years, it was quite a moment for them to finally be able to see this troop who have grown up a little bit, see the youngsters who were one or two be five, kind of playing around climbing trees. So yeah, that's quite an important part of what we've done in terms of communication. We did a bit of surveying with our members, visitors, a general audience as to what animals people were most excited about in African forest. And it's no surprise gorillas were number one. But we have cherry crowned mangabees on the same habitat. So they were primate species again from Central Africa and they would cohabit in the wild with western lowland gorillas. So one of the things that we try to do on site is to mix species together wherever possible. And that provides what we'd call enrichment for the animals. They have different interactions that they wouldn't do if they were lone species that they would experience in the wild. And I imagine the cherry crowned mangabes will keep the gorillas on their toes, but it provides stimulation which is great for animal welfare, but it's also really good for our visitors because it's those moments again that like, you know, that you remember seeing those animals interacting together and that also, you know, conjure those kind of thoughts of what it would be like in Africa if you were to visit and why you might want to save these species in the wild. So we've got cherry crowned mangabes in the same kind of five times bigger habitat. We've got a slender snouted crocodile, which is critically endangered, which lives in river basins. In the same area we have African grey parrots which were saved a while ago from the wildlife trade and are breeding now here, which are endangered in the wild. And the species which don't get a lot of love, sadly not in the marketing either, but are quite special. We have five species, soon to be nine of critically endangered fish, cichlids, which live in one lake in Cameroon in central Africa. And that lake is at quite a high risk of kind of not functioning as a habitat in the future. And so, you know, some of these species, you know, are at risk of, you know, becoming extinct in the wild. And they're not, sadly, they're not the most tropical kind of finding nemo of fish. They're kind of mostly shades of brown. But if you look into them and think a bit more about their plight there, a lot of our team are very passionate about them. So one fact which is amazing and I will share is we have one individual fish, not a species, one individual, which is the only individual in captivity in the entire world in this habitat. I Can't remember its name. I should have brushed up on it. But that individual is effectively the future of that species in captivity. So we obviously need to protect the wild habitat. But the idea of having a population in a zoo is it's a contingency kind of population should the worst happen. So we've got plans in the coming few months to try and get out there and find a date to this fish, effectively to try and breed it. But, yeah, so there's some really beautiful but quite unique animals in this habitat.
Andy Povey: 37:01
It's interesting then, just listening to the whole conversation about moving the animals. I remember being astounded when I first started engaging with zoos as to how collaborative all of the zoos across not just the UK but across the world are and the breeding programmes movement around. It's unusual for someone who is coming from a very overtly commercial environment for me to pick up on.
Matthew Philpott: 37:24
Yeah, I think I've kind of noticed the same coming from like a commercial world for a lot of time. Like, I can't imagine a world ever that Majestic Wine would have collaborated with Tesco on a wine promotion. Like, it wouldn't happen. But zoos are incredibly. And I think that is what's really reassuring as a member of the public or somebody that visits a zoo is to know that zoos are working together to save those species as their primary focus. And all of that collaboration is with a view to achieving that goal. And decisions are made not what's necessarily best for what, each individual zoo, but what's best for the species as a whole. So, again, I'm not an expert, but some of the things I've picked up in terms of those breeding programmes, there's a central coordinator, whether it's European or UK wide or worldwide, and those decisions to move animal, for example, would be based on things like genetics. So maintaining as diverse a genetic pool as possible for the species in captivity, but also, you know, the various other kind of factors, personalities, kind of what the right kind of choice for that kind of animal is.
Andy Povey: 38:44
Matchmaking.
Matthew Philpott: 38:45
Yeah. But ultimately it's about kind of, you know, what will help us kind of keep a healthy population and preserve that species. No money's ever exchanged on. And we had a question from. It was BBC actually was like, so do you buy a gorilla then? And you don't buy a gorilla, thankfully you can't. But, you know, dues will. Animals will move with nothing, exchange. It's not a commercial decision. Obviously there are, you know, costs for meat transporting quite kind of, you know, high Welfare needs, kind of animals around Europe or the UK even. But, yeah, the decisions are always for the best of the species. So nice and reassuring to know that still exists in the world.
Andy Povey: 39:36
It certainly is. Let's move on to talking about the new enclosure. The new project that launched, was it a week ago?
Matthew Philpott: 39:44
Two weeks ago, yeah. So it was 1st of April, if we're date stamping it.
Andy Povey: 39:48
And that's the new African enclosure, where you've got five species altogether. I think you've told us already.
Matthew Philpott: 39:56
Yeah. So it's African forest. It's the first kind of major piece of transformation to Bristol Zoo project since we closed the Clifton site. It's kind of quite central to our visitor location. It kind of brings together a lot of our visitor journey and links pathways, visitor flows. It makes the site feel much more organic. So, yes, the first major transformation, I think. Don't quite quote me on it fully, but I think it's about 12 million pounds investment to create this habitat. It's massive. Yeah, yeah. And it's completely built for the needs of the animals and the team, kind of from the ground up. So, as you might imagine, at Bristol Zoo Gardens over history, things find new leases of life and are reinvented. And I think the gorilla habitat, while it was, you know, I think, you know, really high specification, particularly for its time, but even, you know, as they were living there in the last year, functions really well. But, you know, things change and, you know, we wanted to make sure everything was perfect, really for the team and for the animals. So, you know, everything was thought about in terms of that environment, which is probably something that contributed to that, you know, fairly substantial cost. So earlier a decision was made really early to use natural woodland that we have on site that's beautiful and really mature. And rather than using an empty space where you have no worries about trees and placement of buildings and foundations and all these kind of things, we deliberately made life hard to give the animals that space under the tree canopy. Some of the things the team had to think about in terms of creating it for gorillas. The indoor space they have is huge. They three gorilla gyms inside that they have. I mean, every piece of equipment's made from trees, right? But this is. These are whole tree trunks that it's built out of to replicate a forest environment with the bark on and all. And the reason for some of those decisions is for the manga bees who are in there and the gorillas, it brings natural behaviour, so bark brings insects and they can forage and pick away the floor for their indoor habitat is a bio floor kind of la and layers of bark and various other things. So it's much closer to again a kind of a forest environment and drains naturally and becomes a natural kind of thing in itself as opposed to maybe what guys would have done in the 20s in the Z. Concrete and that kind of thing.
Andy Povey: 42:42
Concrete and painted brown.
Matthew Philpott: 42:43
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, huge amount of thought beyond lots. Huge amount of thought has gone into the planning of that and how we operate it for the welfare of animals and to future proof it as well. So I mentioned the Mangabes share the space with gorillas, but we also have kind of potential future needs in terms of kind of the gorilla troop as it matures. For example, introducing a new silverback to the troop at some point will happen if our younger males move on at some point in the future to become part of their own troop, There could be a period where we need a bachelor group of males for a period of time. So a lot has been thought about to kind of make sure it's fit for 30 years time, not just amazing now. So, yeah, so there were. It's pretty significant in terms of space. I can't give you the acreage, but it's massive. And in that habitat we've got gorillas, manga bees and then a kind of an island, effectively. There's a moat has been built to surround it and that because gorillas can't swim, I think it's their muscle and bone density. They're generally a bit scared of the water because of that. So they won't go through deep water, which means it's a natural barrier as opposed to having artificial barriers between the visitors. You obviously don't want them to be able to get out to the public. So it's kind of, again, it's kind of a nice best way to maintain that kind of segregation between our visitors and the gorillas, but not put barriers in between them. So if. Cast my mind back to what we've talked about earlier, about those moments and transporting people to Africa and them feeling like they're in this kind of immersive kind of world in order to engage with saving the animals. You don't want big fences or barriers for anything. So that's kind of. It's something that we did at Bristol Zoo Gardens but has been carried through here. And then on the other side of the moat we've got a crocodile house which has the cichlid fish I mentioned in there, a slender snouter crocodile and African greys. One of the really important things that we've done in order to engage with visitors, to give them the best experience, but also create conservationists of the future, is to put immersive play around the site. So it's not really just enough to have an amazing habitat and incredible animals. We've created really bespoke kind of features to further the visitor experience, really, I guess, and to kind of give that extra dwell time. So, for example, near the gorilla habitat, we've got a nesting play area. So gorillas will nest in the evening and create a nest for to sleep in. And the idea is that children or families or adults, whatever, can replicate that behaviour in this nest and it helps them to learn just a little bit about the animal through play, rather than just writing it all down or telling them. So we've got gorilla nesting, we've got these huge tree trunks carved out for parrot nesting kind of experience where kids can get in and pretend to nest like a parrot. In there we've got mangaby balance beams where, you know, people can try to be as agile as a mangabe, which, having seen them yesterday, is quite difficult because they're pretty amazing forest bathing. Some of the wonderful trees we have are on the visitor side. And so we have an area in African forest which is about immersing yourself in nature and just taking a bit of time to kind of look at the trees. So I think all of these things come together and it's not just about one animal or a number of animals or a zoo enclosure experience as they were in the past. It's about kind of trying to transport somebody to a different world in that day out that they've got with us, which we do around the zoo. Bare woods is particular, where you go into ancient woodland as well. But the idea is we kind of create biomes and portals into there so people can kind of go through this portal. And the planting feels different, the environment feels different. For examp a crocodile house. One of the decisions was made regarding the environment in there, whether we, you know, close it off and, you know, as you might imagine, an African tropical river is quite a humid, hot environment. And the decision was made to leave that environment on the visitor side as well. So again, when you go in as a visitor, you get the smells of it, you get the humidity, you get the heat hits you and it brings you a different kind of experience that you might have done otherwise.
Andy Povey: 47:47
This is all incredibly fascinating because as I listen to you're telling the storey of building a new zoo. You're right, maybe zoo's not the Right word for it anymore, because I'm not aware of any other institution in the uk, possibly even across the whole of Europe, that has had the opportunity that you guys have had over the past five years to create that new animal experience. If I environment, am I wrong?
Matthew Philpott: 48:14
Have I missed one? No, I can't think of. I mean, I've been to quite a few zoos, particularly more recently, and there are some incredible zoos around the world doing incredible things. So we're not unique, I think, in terms of, you know, it'd be unfair on other colleagues, but I think the opportunity we've had and how focused we've been on achieving there, and because a lot of establish zoos are institutions hundreds of years old, it comes with that backdrop of the risk of how do you make a change? And because we had two sites, were lucky that we could make that decision to effectively sell a valuable space within a city centre and fund future kind of projects, which not every. Everybody will be lucky enough to have that opportunity, or not every visitor attraction has that kind of opportunity. But how. How cutthroat we've been in doing it. And the fact that we have really cut our species plan that we've delivered on 85% of the animals here being, you know, endangered in the wild and in breeding programmes and, you know, with. We've broken a few of the typical rules of zoos. We talked about visitor experience and expectations. People expect lots of animals close to them, relatively confined spaces, and they get like a lot of bang for their buck in terms of like count per animal or, you know, whatever the pennies per animal are. And we've kind of broken that somewhat and gone with kind of higher quality experience for both the animals and for the visitors, we think. And that, yeah, it's not really what Bristol Zoo was in terms of the structure and foundation of it, really. And I guess we see ourselves as kind of a conservation zoo and pushing the boundaries as to what a blueprint should look like for a zoo of the future. What reason is it here for how does it function, what impact does it have? But also why do people still come to see animals in this kind of environment? And how can we justify that?
Andy Povey: 50:36
That makes a lot of sense. So let's get the crystal ball out and start looking into the future. Do you see the whole of the zoo industry going the way that you guys are? So in 10 years time, are there going to be lots more spaces like the ones that you're creating?
Matthew Philpott: 50:51
I mean, having seen African forests, in reality, these as you touched on, are really collaborative and actually work together. We will have worked with numerous experts to achieve what we have done with this habitat and have no doubt that our team will then lend that to other zoos who come asking, how did you do your gorilla habitat? Lots of our conservation animal teams work as part of subcommittees for particular species and there's a huge knowledge sharing around. So, yeah, it would be nice to think that we have set a bit of a precedent and can influence kind of other zoos around the world. As I say, we've no doubt been influenced by some other incredible institutions around the world. I see that in some zoos and the way that they've probably influenced our team in terms of particularly the spaces and how we've set up the habitat. But, yeah, it would be. There is change coming. So there is next year a new kind of new zoo kind of regulations coming in, kind of a government legislation which sets out how zoos should operate in the future. And I think it's a couple of years in terms of introduction to being fully enforced, but it's quite a sizable kind of document and guidelines and really welcome, I think, for the zoo industry. A number of our team conservation, animal welfare fed into that document in terms of kind of trying to. And other incredible zoos. Jester Zoo will also have fed in and it brings some reasonably significant changes to the industry. I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to go through the list of them, but some of the things that I picked out, which we already do, is all animals should have free rein of where they go and when. So none of the animals here in Bristol Zoo Project are confined to a space at night time. For example, they may choose to go indoors because that's where they sleep, but they're not locked in anywhere, so they go wherever they want, when they want, within their habitat space. There will be a regulation for animals always to have a kind of, we call it industry term, but offshore, where they can, if they choose to be away from the public, that's their prerogative. They go and hide away. And that's something that's been pretty integral to what we do since we opened the site and a number of other kind of legislations that really guide what zoos are like in the future. For example, the need to actively run conservation programmes. It's been part of what we've done at Bristol Zoological Society for really long time, but that will become a component of what zoos have to do in the future and it will be enforced. So it's all kind of pretty good news, to be honest with you, in terms. But I would imagine something as significant of that will cause challenges at the same time as addressing kind of some of the problems. Couldn't comment on other zoos in particular, but it will. We'll make change happen and with that comes investment and changes to ways of working and all sorts of stuff. So yeah, there will be change coming from that perspective, but in terms of that influence and what we're setting out, what a zoo should be, I'd like to think that others will follow that same path. I mean, but others are. Yeah. There's so many great zoos and people around the world.
Andy Povey: 54:46
World, absolutely. Yeah. We're on the journey, aren't we? I try and end every episode, Matt, with a piece of advice from my guest to other attractions that maybe don't have the advantage of the we're talking about at that time. I think that's going to be really difficult because I don't think anybody's going to be in a position that you can ping.
Matthew Philpott: 55:15
I know it's a tricky one. Well, yeah, I think in terms of the specific challenge we've got as a Z, that's tough. I think my advice because I've worked in a few business directions is use data to understand your visitors and make business decisions to drive whatever your goal is. That's something I've tried to bring from my retail background to visitor attractions. Yeah, I'm sure there are some big, bad, amazing visitor attractions who do this, but sometimes where you're juggling multiple hats with small teams and busy schedules and always looking at the next day, it's sometimes easy to kind of to not use data to make decisions. So that works for us. It won't work for everybody. But I try to be quite rigorous in terms of marketing, communications and always thinking of the visitors and making sure that you're in touch through whatever channels necessary with your visitors and building something for them and making decisions for them because ultimately that's what will drive your success, isn't it? And that's a kind of. I'm sure lots of visitor directions do this, but it's kind of Retail is built on customers and making decisions based on data. So that's what I think should happen in most businesses, to be honest. But definitely visitor directions.
Andy Povey: 56:55
I think you planted the seed for the idea for a different episode, maybe a different conversation met. So let's leave that one to Graham. Final question then. Let's promote the zoo. So you're very close to the M5. So if any of our listeners are planning on holidaying in the southwest of the country this year, how do we get to see.
Matthew Philpott: 57:15
Yeah, so we are. We're just opposite the Cribs Causeway side for anybody that drives past or knows it. But we're junction 17 of the M5. If you're coming from Wales or west of England or from the Midlands or from London, pretty central to that. And we do make a lovely stopover on the way down to Cornwall because it's a long trip and rather than spending some time in Goodeno services near me, you could be eating your sandwich. Gorillas climbing trees and mangabes jumping around, it could be a lot worse. But yeah, I think I'd probably encourage people to just come and see what we do and when they come to just of think about how to get the most out of it. So spend a little bit longer than you might have done looking and waiting for something to happen and chat to our incredible team about the animals and learn more about them and come to some of our talks and, you know, make the most of the day out if you can.
Andy Povey: 58:22
No, not at all. Matt, thank you for your time and listeners. Make sure you check the show notes for Matt's video about moving the grill. Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today and good luck with everything that you're doing. I can't wait to come and see it.
Matthew Philpott: 58:37
Cool, thanks for having me and yeah, we'll definitely show you around when you're here next.
Andy Povey: 58:43
Matt, thank you so much for joining me today. Bristol Zoo is such a core part of Bristol's history. We're very much looking forward to see it thrive and grow in its new home. If you'd like to learn more about the exciting plans Bristol Zoo has, please visit bristolzoo.org.uk. Today's episode was written by Sami Entwistle, edited by Steve Folland and produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle from Plaster, as well as Wenalyn Dionaldo from Skip the Queue HQ.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please, like share and comment on the episode in your podcast app. It all helped spread the word about us and the amazing attractions we work with. Be sure to visit skiptheque.fm for today's episode's transcriptions and listen to the rest of the season so far. Once again, I'm your host, Andy Povey. See you next time.