We’re Not Going To The Zoo, Zoo, Zoo; That’s Why They Need You, You, You…
While the big, famous, zoos have deep reserves and can shovel some straw in the direction of the pandas safe in the knowledge that summer and the end of social distancing will bring bumper crowds, spare a thought for the smaller, independent zoos that were already living hand-to-beak.
Top of our list is Battersea Park Children’s Zoo. Small and family-friendly, the zoo is home to otters, meerkats, monkeys, snakes and donkeys among the 47 different species and they all rely on the steady flow of funds generated from visitors coming to admire their creatures on a weekly basis. Funds that have obviously dried up.
So they’ve started a crowd-funder.
The idea is to raise enough funds to keep the animals safe and looked after during the period of lockdown. They’re asking for small donations to the zoo, and who could look a baby otter in the face and really say they needed their furlough cash for things like pasta and UHT milk?
It seems that London has responded as fulsomely as you’d expect, the zoo already smashed through their funding target and now they’ve extended the figure to go even further and provide yet more for the stricken animals and giving the zoo the chance to further improve their conservation and education goals as-and-when ‘normal times’ resume.
