Closure ‘Complacent and reckless’ zoo boss leaves protesters furious
CAMPAIGNERS trying to save the Bristol Zoo site from being redeveloped have slammed its chief executive Dr Justin Morris as “astonishingly complacent” about the strength of feeling in the city over the closure of the zoo.
The Save Bristol Zoo group was responding to an interview with the Post, ahead of next week’s crunch council planning committee meeting, which will decide on an application to build 196 new homes around the zoo site, and create a public gardens from the rest.
Dr Morris said the campaigners calling for the zoo to reopen, or for an alternative future for the site, were “naive” about the future of zoos in the 21st century, and added the Victorian premises were “not fit for purpose”. He also said the campaigners’ motivation was based on not wanting the new houses and apartment buildings in that spot in Clifton.
That has infuriated the Save Bristol Zoo Gardens campaign, who accused Dr Morris of withholding reports which outlined a range of options for the zoo site, and said he was “complacent and reckless” with the historic and famous Clifton Zoo Gardens.
The Save Bristol Zoo campaign has been backed by prominent Bristol figures including Prof Alice Roberts and former mayor George Ferguson, and campaigners have held public meetings, marches and rallies to support their call for the zoo to be saved or turned into a different kind of visitor attraction. The main thrust of their campaign is to say the zoo did not need to close – something Dr Morris has strongly disagreed with. A spokesperson for the Save Bristol Zoo campaign said: “Dr Morris is astonishingly complacent if he thinks nearly 10,000 petition signatories and more than 1,000 planning objectors are merely objecting to luxury flats.
“His assertion that the zoo has a viable plan to preserve public space at the zoo merely demonstrates
that whilst Dr Morris may have acquired some knowledge about zoos since leaving the Natural History Museum in 2018, he is breathtakingly innocent of the commercial drivers and profit motive of housing developers. His ‘public space’ will vanish as quickly as the concrete is poured.
“Dr Morris really should not be allowed to get away with such nonsense. It is he that is ‘naive’ if he truly thinks that the small profit he is likely to make from asset stripping Bristol Zoo will be anything other than a drop in the ocean in the hopeless money pit that is Wild Place in South Gloucestershire,” he added.
As well as the 196 new homes around the edge of the zoo site, the bulk of the gardens will be made accessible as part of the current plans.
Dr Morris said a management committee for the whole site would be set up to maintain the apartments, but also keep the gardens and open them to the public.
The make-up of that management committee would include the zoo charity itself and local residents, as well as the developers who build the apartments.