WHEN Rebecca Brewer accepted the leadership of Durrell at the end of 2023 as interim chief executive, she took on an organisation under siege.
Jersey Zoo faced multiple accusations of bullying and had already seen a slew of high-profile resignations. Dominic Wormell, head of mammals, stood down after 34 years while another former employee, Joya Ghose, accused the zoo of tolerating a toxic workplace culture.
“I sat in this room when I took over,” she tells the JEP from the Durrell boardroom, “and I said: ‘If anyone feels that they haven’t had their concerns dealt with, if anyone is unhappy with the outcome […] I want you to come forward now.
“I said: ‘We are listening’.”
Only one person came forward, Ms Brewer says, with a point of clarification, and otherwise the room was satisfied.
Ms Brewer, meanwhile, who has served as Durrell’s chief financial officer and operations manager prior to taking on the chief executive position, says that she does not recognise the picture painted of the Zoo as a hotbed of bullying, toxicity and misogyny. “Personally? I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel it,” she says.
Back at the end of 2023, however, it was only going to get worse.
More high-profile departures followed, along with a scathing article in a national newspaper that suggested that it wasn’t just bullying that was the problem at the Zoo. A number of former employees, some with more than 30 years’ experience at the Zoo, claimed that it had strayed from the vision of its founder, Gerald Durrell.
Critics also allege that the Durrell board have tried to fix the election of a new batch of trustees ahead of an annual general meeting on Thursday, engineering it so that three Zoo loyalists – Matthew Hatchwell, Gary Clark, and Sarah Cook – could be re-elected despite having reached the end of their terms, along with five new trustees loyal to the current administration.
Trustees election
Voting began for the new trustees on 30 November, and the results are due to be announced on 5 December. Durrell’s current management will be hoping that its “recommended” candidates are elected over several “self-nominated” candidates who are openly critical of the way the storied Jersey institution has been run in recent years.
In the weeks running up to the vote, a noisy group of critics – including a number of self-nominated candidates – complained that the current administration at Durrell had attempted to fix it so that the critics stood no chance of joining the board of trustees, something that Richard Daggett, chair of Durrell’s governance committee, disputes.
He tells the JEP that Durrell appointed an external company, Oxford HR, to vet candidates and that the governance committee had no oversight of which were being selected to go through to the next round (and become a “recommended” candidate).
While it may seem a surprise that someone like Quentin Bloxham, who spent 45 years at the Zoo, did not qualify, that reflects the calibre of candidates, says Mr Daggett, rather than his active exclusion by the powers that be.
In May, a group of 62 members of the Zoo put a resolution to an Emergency General Meeting at the Freedom Centre in St Helier calling for the charity’s board to resign and an independent investigation to be carried out into the management of the Zoo. Out of 16,000 eligible voters, 1,985 voted against the resolution and 710 voted in favour.
If the result of the 2 December vote is a similar defeat for the rebels, Ms Brewer hopes, then Durrell can finally be given the chance to move on.
“It’s been an incredibly difficult time. I don’t think we can underestimate the toll it’s taken on everyone here,” she says.
“There’s been a lot of change over the past 18 months, and I guess we’re really focused on trying to move forward positively.”
Fundraising impact
Ms Brewer says that the ongoing publicity has had a direct impact on fundraising and, as a result, is hampering the work that Durrell does both in Jersey and overseas.
“It is detracting from our ability to deliver income-generation, conservation success, science and training. It impacts everything,” she says.
“We are all here because we are dedicated to our mission, saving species from extinction, wholeheartedly. That’s why we’re here.”
Ms Brewer is flanked by Matt Goetz, interim zoological director, and two other senior employees who cannot be revealed by the JEP as dealing with the media is not part of their roles. Both employees, however, say they sold their houses in the UK in order to come and work at Durrell because they believe in the work that the Zoo does in Jersey and around the world.
Mr Goetz moved to Jersey from Germany 23 years ago in order to take up the job at Jersey Zoo.
“There are 600 zoos in Germany – if I’d wanted to stay at home I could have worked at one of them. But I wanted to come here,” he tells the JEP.
Like Ms Brewer, Mr Goetz says that he did not recognise the picture painted by some of the Zoo’s critics of a toxic workplace where bullying and misogyny were rife. He says that if there were problems at Durrell, they do not exist now.
“It has to be said that currently, now – this year – there is no bullying at Durrell,” Mr Goetz says.
As for in the past, Mr Goetz says: “Me, personally, I wasn’t affected – and my team wasn’t. But I was aware that people had concerns.”
Some of the worst coverage over the past 18 months was when pictures and videos emerged of a sloth sprawled at the foot of a staircase in the Daily Mail. Another picture appeared to show an Aardvark with scratches down its back. The photos appeared to confirm concerns made by Mr Bloxham, who told the Times in 2024 that he had made his concerns clear about the treatment of sloths, in particular, at the Zoo.
“When stories hit the media […] I always think it comes from the right place […], but when they choose to put information out there that really is misinformed [it takes its] toll on the keepers, in particular,” says Ms Brewer.
“The animal staff are here day in, day out. They move their families here. They move themselves here. That’s what really hurts.”
On the subject of the picture, Mr Goetz echoes Ms Brewer’s comments to the Daily Mail at the time: “A picture at a moment in time does not tell the whole story.”
Anthropomorphism
As the JEP walks the Zoo grounds with Mr Goetz, Ms Brewer and the two other keepers, he reflects on the tendency of us – as humans – to anthropomorphise animals, to describe them as happy or sad. “Those are human emotions,” he snaps, “we can talk about whether they are content.”
Besides, he says, we forget that the wild is a violent place, far more violent than a Zoo, where animals are fed and protected from people, and from each other.
The truth about the Zoo, both Ms Brewer and Mr Goetz say, is that it is staffed by people who believe in the mission and make sacrifices – be they logistical or financial – in order to do so.
“We could all do different things and live somewhere else and get paid more money, but we are here because we care and we want to do the right thing,” says Ms Brewer.
“We have to move forward. Next year is a big year. It’s our founder’s (Gerald Durrell’s) hundredth birthday. I hope that Jersey can be proud of that, and celebrate that, and talk about the impact that we’ve had in that time,” she says.
“It’s time to move on.”
