Keepers and creatures mark 50 years of safari

Attraction forced to change plans for week-long celebration

Picnics with giraffes, boating trips with hippos and light-fingered monkeys are among a half-century of memories being recalled as a safari park marks its 50th anniversary in lockdown.

Plans for a weekend-long celebration have been scuppered by the coronavirus outbreak so Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling is marking the milestone without any visitors.

Park management had organised for visitors to be transported through the reserve on classic cars from the 60s and 70s and a vintage bus, as well as planning to hand out slices of a giant birthday cake.

But as the park remains closed due to the pandemic, keepers celebrated the anniversary with the animals yesterday while socially distancing – marking the occasion with 50th birthday cakes in both human and animal varieties.

When it first opened on May 15 1970, Blair Drummond was the only safari park in Scotland and the third in the UK.

The 160-acre site is now home to more than 300 animals, including a pride of lions, Barbary macaques from Gibraltar and Scotland’s only herd of giraffes.

Park manager Gary Gilmour said: “It has just been so surreal with the great weather we have been having and no visitors around to enjoy what should have been a great day.

“When we first opened our gates 50 years ago it was only £1 a car and the queues stretched for nine miles.

“We had three lion reserves and the monkey jungle reserve.

“It was a bit like Russian roulette taking your car around the monkeys then, everyone remembers when their granddad’s prized car was ambushed by a rogue group of monkeys and then leaving the reserve minus a car aerial or wiper blade.”

“Nowadays you have an option to use a bypass route for our Barbary macaque reserve.”

Mr Gilmour praised the public for their continued support.

He said: “On our website our lions webcam has been getting 15,000 hits a day with people trying to catch a glimpse of our lion cubs Hope and Faith.”

PA. Keeper Lynn Wyllie holds a giraffe-friendly birthday cake at Blair Drummond Safari Park. Below: a spot of scrapbook nostalgia and two residents have a closer look at the 50 sign. Pictures: