Sloths are ordinarily solitary creatures that live high in the trees of tropical rainforests, spending their time hanging upside down from branches.
So when images emerged of Jersey Zoo’s sloth lounging around in a public stairwell, very close to curious children, conservationists were unhappy.
Critics of the zoo have also pointed to photographs of aardvarks trying to sleep in an area where visitors often bang on the glass and a female aardvark with scratches down her back.
They say that the pictures illustrate the crisis at Jersey, where trustees have been accused of eroding the mission of its founder, the naturalist Gerald Durrell, who died in 1995.
Durrell, a friend of Sir David Attenborough, set up his zoo with animals in mind, rather than human visitors. He championed lesser-known creatures he called “little brown jobs” rather than more popular and recognisable animals such as tigers, lions, elephants and giraffes.
Advertisement
While the zoo insists that animal welfare is its highest priority and that it continually adapts animal environments in line with husbandry guidelines, it has been in turmoil for months.
Some of its most experienced staff quit, citing a change in ethos, while high-profile managers have also departed. The board has been accused of bringing in popular animals, including the sloths and aardvarks, at the expense of endangered species that Durrell promoted.
• Missing golden eagle Merrick ‘shot dead while roosting’
On Wednesday the board of trustees survived a confidence vote but hundreds of members called for them to be ousted. The development is unlikely to silence critics, who plan to bring up their concerns at the next annual general meeting.
In September The Times revealed the resignation of Dominic Wormell, the head of mammals who had worked at the zoo for 34 years. He suggested that management had fallen into commercialism, that the zoo was failing children who visited and some recent changes were at odds with Durrell’s principles.
Advertisement
• Hope for Amazon rainforest as fewer trees cut down
In the months since, a string of other keepers and staff, with a combined working history of more than 250 years at the zoo, have quit. The zoo’s operations director and its chief executive also left.
Quentin Bloxam, who worked at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust for more than 45 years including as senior curator and as a director of conservation management, said that the zoo’s reputation had been “badly damaged”. He expressed concern about its direction as well as the treatment of animals.
For example, Bloxam warned that the sloth enclosure was unsuitable for a canopy-living species. They were housed inside a building that was not even designed for animals, he said, and was originally intended to be an immersive jungle experience with plants, not creatures. The aardvark accommodation was too small for two large-bodied mammals that need individual space, he said.
• Visiting a zoo ‘makes people care more about sustainability’
Advertisement
The zoo is championing a rewilding project in Scotland but Bloxam said that it was against Durrell’s philosophy of “lost causes” such as the Mauritius kestrel, pink pigeon, echo parakeet, Montserrat mountain chicken frog, Galapagos mangrove finch, Madagascar pochard and pygmy hog. The Scottish project failed to meet the criteria, he said, as it was focused on more common species.
Writing in a local newspaper last week, Julia Fa, a former Durrell director, said that there was a “troubling trend of mismanagement and disregard for the values that Durrell stands for”.
She said: “I wholeheartedly endorse the current call for accountability and support the change within the board. The erosion of trust and the departure from our core values cannot be ignored.”
The zoo produced images of the sloths exploring at night and aardvarks sleeping indoors to support its position that animal welfare was its top priority. It said that it had made improvements to the sloth enclosure including a new misting system to improve humidity, regular new climbing opportunities and a variety of nest boxes. It said that the female aardvark, Nacho, received minor skin abrasions during her introduction with the male, which was not uncommon in the species. They were now “closely bonded”.
Professor Carl Jones, the chief scientist at Durrell, said that “it is our concern for our animals that has made us so successful” and that working with the world’s most endangered species was still the mission.
Advertisement
Matthew Hatchwell, the chair of Durrell’s board of trustees, said: “The board organises an independent examination of itself every three years, and that review is coming up later this year. This will be especially important in helping us to understand how we might have handled things better over the past year.”
