Financially stressed zoo an ‘outlier’ for council funding
It’s one of the big four major zoos in the country, and the only one in the South Island, but it receives about $250,000 each year from the local council, while the others get millions.
Orana Wildlife Park signalled fears of an “inevitable demise” in its bid for more funding in the Christchurch City Council’s long-term plan (LTP).
This financial year, the park was looking at a $1 million loss, Orana Wildlife Park chief executive Lynn Anderson said. Its annual operating cost is $5.1m.
Meanwhile, the zoos in the North Island receive millions each year from their local ratepayers – one even had an extra $348,000 bailout.
Wellington Zoo got $4.1m of funding from the Wellington City Council in 2023-24 towards its $10m operating budget. The trust running the zoo is a council-controlled company. It also received capital funding from the council to the tune of $1.3m for the renewal of assets over the same period.
Hamilton Zoo is owned, operated and fully funded by the Hamilton City Council. Public funding covered approximately $1m of its $3.8m annual operating costs, after revenue of $2.8m came in through ticket sales and other grants.
Auckland Zoo received $5.5m in local ratepayer funding towards its $19m annual operating cost in 2023-24. The zoo is part of Tātaki Auckland Unlimited – a council-controlled organisation. It also had a “significant contribution” towards maintenance and capital renewals over the past 10 years, which varied around $15m to 18m a year.
Orana Park, owned and operated by a registered charitable trust rather than by council-controlled organisations, submitted to the LTP for a staged approach of $500,000 in the first year, $1m in the second year, and $1.5m in the third year and beyond. It was not asking the council for capital funding like the other regional zoos also receive.
Anderson said she was “urging” the council and the community to back the park. Until 2018, visitor income at Orana covered 90% of annual operating costs – it now covers only 65%.
“The funding and support that the other three major zoos in the North Island receive clearly speaks that our other major cities all really value their zoos as key conservation organisations,” she said.
Orana’s history of fundraising efforts to help keep the park running, which included raising $6m for its Great Apes centre, that brought New Zealand's only gorillas to Christchurch, was something to be proud of, Anderson said.
But having to raise money for major maintenance and improvements on top of high operational costs “just becomes an impossible target”.
This year’s $1m projected loss was initially looking worse, expected to be $1.5m. Then the zoo received a $400,000 one-off grant from the council from a Better Off fund – the now-abandoned Three Waters reform support package.
“We are incredibly grateful for it,” Anderson said, but it wasn’t enough.
When Wellington Zoo experienced a $348,000 deficit last year, its local council bailed it out and covered the loss with extra funding, said its chief financial officer Daniel Warsaw.
He said the zoo’s costs had increased by 30% since 2018-19 (pre-Covid) while revenue had increased by 25%. Each of the four major zoos acknowledged that increasing operational costs had affected them all in recent years.
“Orana is an outlier ... they’re the only large zoo in the country that isn’t supported to the same level of us by their local council, so it is a challenge,” Warsaw said.