The success of the British zoo is undeniable. They are a slam-dunk tourist destination – four of the nation’s top 10 paid-for attractions. One in five of us go to the zoo at least once a year: it’s a favourite of schoolchildren, weary parents and young adults looking for something to do. There are some 330 of them in total, and according to the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA), some 30 million people visited one of their 130 members in 2024. They slumped in the 1970s and 1980s, but now zoos are back.
We have a conflicted relationship with the zoo. Just 22% of us reckon they should be banned, but around half think it unacceptable to keep large animals like elephants or great apes in captivity – exactly the creatures zoo-goers most want to see. Stories of neglect and cruelty regularly hit headlines. In October 2024, for example, came disturbing reports from the now closed South Lakes Safari Zoo in Cumbria: overstocked animals “fighting”, “inbreeding” and lying bloodied on the floor, and a peacock that had its head ripped off by giant otters “in front of a school group”. Yet two thirds of us think these institutions a force for good in the relationship between humans and animals.
It’s surprising, in a way, that zoos have survived to 2025. They are the offspring of two ancestors, both long dead. The first is the menagerie, collections of wild animals kept by the rich, and sometimes on public display. (The use of wild animals in circuses, once known as “traveling menageries” was outlawed in England five years ago, after decades of decline). The second is the capture of exotic animals for up-close scientific study, a favourite pastime of Victorian collectors. As technology advanced, of course, biologists were able to study animal behaviour better in the wild.
Campaigners have long argued against the zoo on similar grounds to circuses: keeping animals in such conditions is cruel. But zoos outran their critics by rebranding themselves as centres of conservation, to great success. Some three quarters of the public now reckon these institutions are good for conservation and human understanding of animals in general. This staunch view has tended to stall attempts to persuade politicians against them.
“When I have spoken to people in parliament about this, they say there are no votes in shutting zoos,” says Damian Aspinall, who runs a conservation charity. “But the public don’t understand the truth. Zoos are selling a myth”.
Are they? When it comes to the environment, zoos tend to make three broad claims. The first is that they donate large sums to conservation projects abroad. “Since 2020, our members alone have spent over £153m on conservation, which goes on anything from restoring habitats to paying rangers,” says a spokesman for BIAZA.
That figure seems impressive, but works out on average to about £200,000 per member a year – a figure that tallies with an estimate given to me by Born Free, an anti-zoo charity, which says that last year European zoos spent some £136,500 each on donations. That contribution, they say, pales in comparison to the amount they lavish on keeping animals in cages, which is hugely expensive, particularly when they require artificial environments. The annual cost of keeping a single elephant in a zoo in 2019, for example, was £79,000 – and zoos spend millions on new enclosures. In a report in 2021, the charity found that these institutions donated on average just 4.2% of their annual income on conservation projects in the wild. (The retort from zoos tends to be that something is better than nothing. “That money wouldn’t exist at all without the zoo,” says BIAZA.)
No large swell of people end a day at the zoo with a donation to ‘Save the Rhino’
The second claim is of a different type of conservation work: zoos say they act as a protective “ark” for endangered species, and do important research. Some zoos have cryogenic labs, keeping samples of at-risk animals. Some have succeeded in breeding and reintroducing species: beavers, harvest mice, black rhino, white stork and black-footed ferrets. Others test medical treatments. Chester Zoo, for example, has pioneered a vaccine against elephant herpes, which they say would not have been possible to test on animals in the wild.
“You can’t deny zoos have reintroduced some species”, says Chris Lewis, policy manager at Born Free. “But they always reel off the same names: there are so few of them. And the number reintroduced is so small as to be negligible.” Animals in captivity, especially larger ones, rarely acquire the skills for survival in the wild.
As for the vaccine, “There is no need for a vaccine for wild elephants as they have co-evolved alongside the virus. It is not even listed as a threat on the world ‘red list’ for endangered species.” Instead, Lewis says the virus is more of a problem for elephants in captivity, accounting for 40% of young elephant deaths in zoos.
Dr Sue Walker at Chester Zoo argues that the research will become more relevant over time. “The pressures we are putting elephants under means that they will more likely become susceptible to the virus,” she says. “The wild is not as wild as it was.”
Then too, she says, education is one of the main ways Chester will help the environment, igniting interest among schoolchildren, who may one day become conservationists themselves. That is also the philosophy of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which says that a major aim is “inspiring people worldwide to ensure a future where wildlife thrives”.
That brings us to the third mission of modern zoos, which is that they are generating interest in preserving the animals they show. But there is little evidence to support this. No large swell of people end a day at the zoo with a donation to “Save the Rhinos” for example.
“What they are actually doing is educating the next generation that it is OK to keep animals in zoos,” says Aspinall. “The fact that children can become very knowledgeable and obsessed with dinosaurs without seeing one shows that nothing about this adds up.”
Whatever claims zoos make, they cannot deny that a trade-off exists at the heart of their project. The more we learn about animal sentience and their capacity for sadness, pain, joy and friendship, the clearer the plight of those in captivity becomes. Are the modest environmental gains made by zoos worth condemning a beautiful wild creature to a life of despair? If not, who will break the news to the parents of Britain’s preschoolers, looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon?
Photograph by Andrew Barker/Alamy