Zoos (Regional Economic Development)

David Tredinnick Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

I am most grateful to you, Mr Bone, for allowing me to speak first after my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell). The debate is well supported this morning, perhaps because of his efforts. He has already mentioned twice the famous Twycross zoo in my constituency. I would like to discuss the twin aspects of developing economic activity in respect of zoos: what they are doing at home and, in the case of Twycross, what they are doing abroad.

In my area, we feel strongly about my zoo. I claim Twycross as a zoo of my own because I have represented the area for many years and know the zoo’s founders and staff, whom I have tried to support for a long time. Twycross receives 400,000 visitors a year and has nearly 1,000 animals—500 mammals, 220 birds and 135 reptiles. It has the widest range of animals in captivity in the area, but they are not in cages. We also have the best laid out area, which consists of 40 acres where elephants, giraffes, lions and leopards can roam around outside.

If we are to develop economic activity in the zoo industry, we must ensure that there are open spaces and that zoos meet the modern requirements that people expect. They do not want to see all animals in cages. I congratulate Molly Badham, Nathalie Evans and Suzanne Boardman and her team on managing to take things forward, so that we have a new paradigm in zoos. We are talking about economic activity at home and what is happening abroad. If someone wants to have a successful business as a zoo, they need to be very forward thinking. I submit that that is exactly what Twycross has done. I shall cite three or four projects in which it has engaged that have increased visitor numbers and set a very fine example.

The first is the Borneo longhouse project, which is part of four projects where the public are immersed in animal activity. Rather than just looking through the window, the public are part of the experience. That first experience was opened by Liz Hurley in 2005. I was very lucky to be there and she did a fantastic job of drawing publicity to the zoo. The longhouse has not only simulated rain and steam, but simulated thunder and lightening. It is a very exciting place to be, and of course zoos must be exciting if we are to attract younger people and prevent zoos withering on the vine, like our public houses; that is a very sad thing. We must have exciting venues for people to visit. I can assure hon. Members that coming back through the bat cave is exciting because one can see the bats, although some people might not like bats that much.

The second very exciting development at Twycross that I would like to mention is the amazing snow leopard outdoor park, which is a massive outside cage that is about two cricket pitches long. Visitors in the extensive visitors’ centre, where people can buy a range of animal souvenirs, can see snow leopards out on the rocks. That has been a fantastic draw for people and the experience has been combined with what I was going to call corporate entertainment, but it is done in a slightly different way. People can book the venue to have lunch, dinner and receptions while watching the snow leopards and the birds in the wetland wader bird enclosure that is next door. That 40 acres is a dynamic, exciting, forward-looking area, where animals can roam and people can enjoy them and go around on a little train if they want to.

The project has brought great success to Twycross. In fairness, I should mention that it has received top British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums awards this year for best educational project, significant advances in husbandry and welfare, best new zoo enclosure and best research project for entamoeba histolytica—I will send my notes to Hansard. That award was for maintaining animal welfare and dealing with that tricky bug.

There is greater economic activity at home at Twycross, but what is it doing abroad? Twycross takes the lead in conservation abroad. It does conservation in situ at home in terms of trying to protect endangered species, and it currently has 67 species of animal in the European endangered species programmes or European studbooks. That is significant because, in the past, zoos have been under attack by people who do not like animals in cages. As I have said, Twycross is a very open area. There is open access and it is forward looking. Also, if we do not have organisations such as Twycross zoo, we will not have some of those species.

We are all worried about endangered species, and I absolutely applaud what Twycross has done to protect specific endangered species abroad such as the gibbon that lives on the Vietnamese-Chinese border that was discovered by Fauna and Flora International scientists some years ago. Only 150 such gibbons remain in the wild, but Twycross has an outreach programme to support them. It has a gibbon conservation centre and a community-based range of patrols. That is an example of what Tywcross has done abroad.

Twycross is doing something else abroad. In areas where it is helping animals, it is encouraging and assisting local people to develop skills that will prevent deforestation, for example, by explaining the benefits of fuel-efficient stoves to reduce the amount of fuel wood collected from the forest. It is also helping local people to grow feed plantations to reduce the free grazing of livestock, which denudes the landscape and threatens the lives of the animals. In addition to the ecological research to which I have referred, it is also planting new tress to help supply sustainable firewood for the future.

I shall not speak for any longer because I do not want to be selfish and take up time. As I said, I am grateful to you, Mr Bone, for allowing me to speak first after my hon. Friend the Member for Romford. I will sum up by saying this. Some two-thirds of a billion pounds is annually put into our tax base by zoos across the UK and, at the last count, there were 11,000 lasting jobs in the sector, including those created by the 400,000 visitors at Twycross in Leicestershire. Some 28 million people a year—one third of our entire population—had some connection with zoos last year. Surely, that is enough for my hon. Friend the Minister to take this issue very seriously indeed.