Mystery £20m donation funds London Zoo vet viewing gallery
Visitors to london zoo will soon be able to watch live veterinary procedures inside a new animal hospital built with the zoo's largest ever gift, a £20m donation from an anonymous benefactor. The Wildlife Health Centre is intended to open those procedures to the public while bringing care, research, training and engagement into one facility.
Kathryn England on London Zoo
Kathryn England, the ZSL chief executive, said: "Our history has shaped how wildlife is studied, treated and protected. Now, that legacy becomes a platform for action." The centre sits inside a long line of veterinary work at the zoo, which ZSL says began in 1829, when it employed the world's first zoo vet a year after opening London Zoo.
ZSL later built Europe's first purpose-built zoo veterinary hospital in the 1950s. The new centre is meant to extend that record with a setting where visitors can see routine care, including weight and dental checks, alongside more specialised work.
Procedures on display
The viewing gallery will show penguin health checks, ultrasounds on pregnant aardvarks and porpoise post-mortems. ZSL says most of the procedures will be routine, and that animals are often trained through cooperative care to take part in their own healthcare.
That includes Galapagos tortoises trained to step onto scales, and lions and tigers trained to present their tails so blood tests and skin samples can be taken. ZSL also says the Wildlife Health Centre will investigate how diseases could spread from animals to humans.
Born Free challenge
Mark Jones, head of policy at the Born Free Foundation, objected to the plan. He said: "On its 200th anniversary, I think the Zoological Society of London should be focusing all its efforts on protecting wildlife in the wild where it belongs, not keeping wildlife in captivity thousands of miles from where it belongs."
Born Free says opening veterinary procedures to the public risks turning animal care into a spectacle. For visitors, the change means the zoo will not only show animals being treated, but will also let them watch the treatment itself from inside the new gallery.
