Over the last century, the way zoos have created their
environments for the animals has changed dramatically.
As we developed and our knowledge of animal care developed,
making much more stimulating habitats for the animals,
enriching the environments, became very, very important.
Now we are moving very much into creating habitats
that still have that enriched environment for the animal
but also the enriched environment for the visitor
so that we have moved from commercial to medical and care,
to actually now it's very much about connection.
We are connecting people through our animals and through our animals' environments.
Animals bring the best out of people. Zoos have a great way to bridge that.
Immersive exhibits have been done for some time in zoos
but what's different about Land of the Lions
is the link that we provide from the zoos to the wild.
It's been very, very important to us to make that fundamental link
that ZSL is working with animals and caring for animals in the zoo
but also caring for animals in Gujarat.
And the stories that we put around here in the zoo
about lions are from India and how close they live to people,
is vitally important in terms of the messaging
and indeed the conservation work that we are doing.
We understand our world through our five senses,
so from what we see, what we touch, what we smell, we taste,
and so the no barrier design process is very much about cutting out all barriers.
So, to give you an example, here we’ve got vertical cables
and so once you are standing face to face with the animal, you don’t see the barrier at all.
Also, you smell the animal, you can feel that low bass rumble,
you know, which is truly transformational,
you know, as a human to another animal.
Traditionally, spaces have been given over to
visitors and operations more so than animals
but that's moving dramatically over towards the animals.
And by creating immersive environments like we have here,
by the nature of visitors being inside the spaces,
by their very nature then the animals have more space
and all those benefits that come from there.
But when you get that virtuous circle of humans,
the visitors and the animals absolutely enjoying the environments together,
and that enjoyment may also be a little bit of terror as well.
We are hardwired to fear and vice versa, which is interesting.
It's not meant to be a walk in the park as it were.
If you come face to face with a lion
something should happen to you and something should happen to the animal.
So again, those things are very much considered, with the balance of space.
But particularly in urban zoos where you have this almost limited defined space,
that becomes really a primary consideration at the very start of any project.
The other thing of course is that you see animals from different vantage points
and that's a different experience altogether.
We love being, even if it's two metres higher, as humans, you know we ground well.
So being just high, that's spectacular,
which is why we always want to stand on our toes and look.
But the other important thing we tried to do here
is actually get visitors in each shot,
so it's not just an animal theatre, as it were,
you’ve got actual people behind the animal.
And in that way, it sets off a very, very different experience
Again, it comes back to we’re in the animal's world as opposed to vice versa.
We do spend a lot of time designing an environment that is flexible
because animal personalities, they do certainly have personalities, but they change.
So, the important thing in every environment that we design is flexibility.
So the animals can choose where they go,
they can choose the different substrates they want to be on,
they can choose which area they want to be on,
they can also choose whether they want to be on show or not.
If they want to get away from the visitors, they can do.
One of our main learning outcomes
was that the UK audience understand how closely
people in Gujarat and the Gir Forest live alongside lions.
You can wake up in the morning with a lion in your back yard; you really can.
But people live alongside them.
That has huge lessons for us in the UK.
If people in India can live alongside lions surely we can live alongside badgers,
surely we can live alongside hedgehogs and not destroy their habitat but promote it.
So, working to live alongside animals in a cooperative way,
we've got lessons to learn from elsewhere.
The vital role that zoos play in conservation
is now recognised by conservation bodies across the globe and it is essential.
We are organisations that care not just for lions and tigers,
but for the freshwater fish, for the snails, for the species that sometimes get ignored.
But zoos have an immense role to play in just connecting people with nature.
That ability to evoke emotions, for people who might come to the zoo for a day out,
they leave just loving animals a little bit more.
And that is a huge, huge role
especially when most of our zoos are in urban environments.