[title]
If you’ve spent any amount of time in London, its zoo will have featured in your life at some point. Even if you’ve not been in to gawp at the lizards and lions, you will have seen the zoo’s iconic Snowdon Aviary and four artificial mountains of the Mappin Terraces that are part and parcel of the Regent’s Park skyline.
It should concern all Londoners, then, that the zoo and its conservation work face an ‘uncertain future’ due to the current crisis. London Zoo and its sister site in Whipsnade, Bedfordshire have been closed since March, meaning they’ve missed out on an estimated 250,000 visitors.
‘We are having conversations with very generous people who have supported us in the past, and with banks, in order to make sure the future does not remain perilous,’ said director general Dominic Jermey. ‘But at the moment it’s a very challenging moment for the organisation.’
The longest London Zoo has ever been shut before this was for two weeks during the Blitz. Income generated by the institution, which houses more than 20,000 animals, is used solely to fund scientific research and global conservation efforts. The zoo is now asking for donations from the public in order to secure its future.
Read London Zoo’s full statement here.
Most popular on Time Out
- Plans to ease London’s lockdown are set to be delivered this week
- Theatres will stay closed until 2021, says ‘Les Mis’ producer
- The National Theatre is streaming a free play every Thursday
- These local London garden centres will deliver plants to your door
- McDonald’s is reopening 15 restaurants – and four of them are in London