Happenings

Twycross Zoo

This is Jess Zara, senior conservator at Twycross Zoo. She came to talk to us about the conservation work which she and her team, and indeed everyone at Twycross Zoo, carry out throughout the year. Their brief is very wide-ranging, and includes working with zoos around the world to preserve and protect wildlife, especially endangered species through a programme of selective breeding and reintroducing the young animals into the wild. They also advise on and work to improve habitats throughout the world, not least at Twycross itself, where they have just begun work on a new wildlife park. 

Twycross Zoo has the largest collection of monkeys and apes in the Western World, the youngest of which is a bonobo chimp born just six weeks ago. Bonobos are special because they share 98.7% of their DNA with humans which makes them our nearest living relatives. 
 

Jess’s lively talk and engaging was wide-ranging, and covered six huge areas of conservation work. She has promised to come back next year to give us more detail about just one of those areas, and to share with us ideas about how we can help the conservation work. Cool stuff!