From the summer of gorillas and tortoises to the silence of pandemic closures, Durrell has seen boom, bust and bruising battles over its future. With the 2024 accounts exposing its hardest year yet, the JEP traces the story of its finances, visitors and challenges in the years following its rebrand. Megan Davies reports.
2017 marked the beginning of a new era for Durrell. That was the year the Wildlife Park – as it had been known for many decades – rebranded as Jersey Zoo.
The change, championed by newly appointed CEO Dr Lesley Dickie, was not without controversy, but was presented as a way of proudly reclaiming the “zoo” identity and making the site more visible to tourists.
“Zoo is a universally recognised word whereas wildlife park means different things in different languages,” she explained at the time.
The move was welcomed by Honorary Director Lee Durrell, who saw it as reaffirming both the charity’s roots and its mission.
2018
With its new identity in place, the following year set the new ‘Zoo’ up strongly ahead of the pandemic.
In 2018, despite a wet spring and the ‘Beast from the East’, investments in new exhibits such as the Butterfly House and a new play area, drove admissions up and boosted secondary spending. Retail sales rose 19% on the previous year, while income streams such as glamping, the hostel and the charity shop were all growing.
The Trust closed the year with a £3.37m surplus, a healthy cushion that set the stage for expansion.
2019
The following year brought even more spectacular results. In 2019, more than 240,000 people visited the zoo – a 28% increase on the average of the previous decade – making it one of the busiest years in the zoo’s history.
The “Go Wild Gorillas” art trail helped raise more than £1m towards a new gorilla house, while also drawing islanders and tourists alike. Total income reached £23.8m, buoyed by legacy donations and rising commercial revenue.
2020
Then came 2020. When the gates closed in March, income collapsed. At the same time, fixed costs for animal care continued as usual. Emergency fundraising – the ‘Love Your Zoo’ campaign – brought in more than £1m, while a one-off legacy of £2.6m provided a vital lifeline. Even so, income fell to £13.1m, significantly down on 2019. Cost-cutting and furlough support meant the Trust finished the year in the black, with a £3.7m net result, but only after extraordinary efforts to stabilise finances.
2021
The picture improved in 2021 as vaccines rolled out and restrictions eased. The zoo welcomed 195,788 visits, mostly from members rather than tourists, reflecting a slow recovery in the island’s visitor economy. Income rose to £10.45m, including £980,000 from the Jersey Government’s Fiscal Stimulus Fund to support the gorilla house project.
2022
By 2022, the Trust was back on its feet. Visitors held steady at 196,114, and total income surged to £13.6m – the highest operating income in its history when legacies were excluded. The net result before investments are considered was a small surplus of £50,000. Commercial income exceeded 2019 levels, helped by new shops at the zoo and the airport. For the first time since before the pandemic, there was a sense that the Trust was moving forward again. Yet losses on investments meant that, on paper, the year still closed with a £2.2m reduction in reserves.
2023
Following the success of the gorillas, the Tortoise Takeover sculpture trail helped to fundraise for a new amphibian and reptile house. And the bounced peaked when visitor numbers hit 209,474 – the strongest post-pandemic figure – and raised £1.3m for conservation.
Admissions income rose 13%, with paid visitors making up 40% of the total. Total income was £13.8m. But despite the success, legacy donations came in unusually low at £452,000, and costs continued to rise. That same year, the Trust recorded a £2.4m deficit.
But a very different storm was also brewing.
Animal welfare concerns started circulating on social media following the sudden resignation of Head of Mammals Dominic Wormell, who had worked there for more than three decades and later had various applications to join the charity as a member declined.
Particular concerns were raised regarding the Guernsey goats, aardvarks and new “immersive” sloth exhibit set in the stairwell area of the Andean bears’ enclosure, which was made up of ropes, poles, an artificial tree and baskets which members of the public could come close to. Jersey’s Chief Vet found “no reasons for concern” after visiting, however.
It was also alleged that staff did not feel able to speak up when they had a concern due to how they were treated by management.
Some of those concerns made their way into local and national media – with CEO Dr Lesley Dickie, who had spearheaded the Zoo’s new approach, resigning just under a week after The Times published a published a piece accusing the charity of “chasing cash with cute animals” and going against Durrell’s conservation mission.
The accounts for that year showed exit payments totalling £55,000 were made to two staff members.
2024
The real crunch came in 2024, which the Trust branded a “year like no other”.
A disparate, dissenting group called ‘We Love The Zoo’, which had formed the previous year, placed significant pressure on the organisation.
Months of mediation talks yielded no results, and they tried to unseat the charity’s trustee board in the spring of 2024.
This campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but had nonetheless placed what the Trust’s board described as “unsustainable demands on our time and resources, diverting us from vital work to save species, restore habitats, and raise valuable funds”.
In their annual report, they acknowledged that 2024 wasn’t only a “challenging time in respect of public scrutiny” but “a challenging time financially”.
The charity spent a total of £17.015 million throughout the year – £4.8 million more than it took in – and income fell by 12% after a “tough to beat” 2023.
Visitor numbers fell sharply by 16% to 175,940 – this was not only the lowest since the pandemic, but amid the lowest over the past decade-and-a-half.
The drop was, in part, attributed to a visitor economy that is “still recovering” and the rising “cost of living… impacting all islanders”, but they also said it was “likely the increased scrutiny the Trust, and in particular Jersey Zoo, faced in 2024 also had an impact on visitation”.
The year also saw another high-profile departure – Dr Dickie’s second-in-command at the Zoo, Graeme Dick.
The accounts said that six staff departures had cost the charity £121,000 – a record amount and a significant dent in the charity’s budget.
The Trust said that “the challenges of last year, alongside changes in the senior team, affected our ability to fundraise and achieve voluntary income at previous levels”.
And commercial income went down more than half-a-million pounds. This includes the gift shop, charity shop, food venues on-site, and glamping and other accommodation offered by the Zoo.
In 2024, they made £3,427,000 from these – down £555,000 from the previous year.
The Zoo’s gift shop at Jersey Airport shut in January 2025, after almost three years in operation.
At the end of the year, the Trust had recorded its heaviest deficit in years: £4.8m. It said that this was planned, but it was nonetheless £1.2m higher than the figure that had been budgeted for – despite under-budget spending.
With a new CEO in place – interim boss Rebecca Brewer, who beat what was described as “world class” competition for the role – the Trust admitted that 2025 would require belt-tightening and a renewed focus on sustainability if the Zoo is to thrive into the future.
2025
But it hasn’t been a straight-forward start.
Dissidents have continued to raise questions publicly about the Zoo’s approach to conservation and decisions to put certain animals to sleep.
Earlier in the year, a pasteurellosis outbreak killed 10 fruit bats, though this led to the development of a world-first bat vaccine.
It has also been under pressure to end the killing of deer for sport at its Dalnacardoch Estate in Scotland from We Love the Zoo and UK-based anti-shooting group Protect the Wild.
The Trust had previously said it would stop “paid deer management experiences” – where visitors pay around £700 to shoot a stag – at the end of the current hunting season in spring 2026, but said this summer that it would in fact be stopping the practice by October this year.
Campaigners nonetheless put forward a motion for the practice to stop immediately for consideration at the next AGM, due to take place on 23 September. However, trustees voted unanimously to decline the resolution.
A request was also made for the next AGM to ask members if they would be in favour of a “full and transparent financial audit”, including the awarding of contracts over the past five years.
However, the board of trustees voted unanimously to decline it on the basis that a similar resolution had been roundly defeated at May 2024 AGM and that their current auditing process is sufficient.
Both the Chair, Matthew Hatchwell, and Gerald Durrell’s widow Lee Durrell, have previously told dissidents who can’t get on board with its leadership to “reflect on whether membership is right for them”.
Despite continuing pressures, the tone of 2025 has also been a celebratory one for the charity, which has been marking the centenary of Gerald Durrell’s birth.
One of the highlights has been Bloom, a colourful installation of thousands of flower sculptures featuring six of their founder’s favourite flowers. Each flower is able to be purchased to raise money for the charity.
And the long-awaited new gorilla house is also due to be complete in December.
Whatever came before, the charity says it is “firmly focused on the future”.
