Campaigners trying to stop the ongoing closure of Bristol Zoo are holding a second big public meeting this week. The Save Bristol Zoo campaign are holding an open meeting on Wednesday evening, starting from 7.30pm at Christ Church, Clifton.
The campaign is calling for the Bristol Zoological Society, which runs the zoo, to reverse their decision to close it and move to the Wild Place on the edge of Bristol, in countryside between Easter Compton and Cribbs Causeway. The save the zoo campaign, which is backed by many leading figures in Bristol, from TV historian Prof Alice Roberts to former mayor George Ferguson, claims Bristol Zoo’s decision to close the famous Clifton Zoo Gardens site has been done for purely financial reasons, to earn as much money as possible from a 220-apartment development that is planned for the site.
The zoo closed on September 1 last year, and since then many of the animals have been moved on to other zoos or moved to the Wild Place by junction 17 of the M5. The Save Bristol Zoo campaign claim that so few of the animals at the zoo - particularly the large mammals - are moving up to the Wild Place, that this is effectively the zoo closing its doors and redeveloping the site.
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The plans to build six-storey blocks of flats on the zoo site in Clifton is expected to go before city council planners next month, and this will be the first opportunity for those campaigners to at least delay the move. A coalition of campaigners has come together, including those local residents who are against the housing plans, those who want to keep the zoo open, and those who want the zoo to be retained as another form of visitor attraction - potentially an ‘augmented reality zoo’.
A spokesperson for the Save Bristol Zoo campaign said: “All are welcome to come and find out more about the campaign and to generate support for our objections to the planning permission.”
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