ZOO OPENING TIMES
We are open every day of the year, including Christmas Day, from 9am until:
| 6.00pm | April - September |
| 5.00pm | October & March |
| 4.30pm | November - February |
2009 Events
Find out what's happening
at the Zoo in 2009.
Events include owl flights,
wildlife lectures, quiz nights and
a wine tasting.
In Situ
Support for in situ conservation, in the wild, happens in a number of different but related ways. The aims and objectives are set out in our Conservation Strategy (2003) which enshrines the fundamental principle that we work in partnership with other organisations, and don’t attempt to ‘ invent the wheel’ by ourselves. As with so many other aspects of conservation, collective action is always more effective than ‘going it alone’.
Every year, we provide funding, expertise and other resources to a number of carefully selected conservation projects around the world, almost all of them linked to ex situ projects with animal species at Edinburgh Zoo.
Since the launch of the first strategy the RZSS has provided around ¼ million pounds towards a huge variety of projects and this is a sum we are continually adding to. In 2005 we provided a budget of £80,000 this was increased to £137,000 when we added our incomes from events,donations from the safari bus, donations from our volunteer run activities and public donations.
We currently have two funding categories:
Project Facilitation Grant
- aimed at smaller projects, usually bound within short (three month) timespans, and mostly carried out by under or post-graduate students taking part in ecology, conservation biology and education based University-expeditions. Project Facilitation Grants are made three times each year up to a maximum of £1,500 per project. These grants have, in the past, provided essential training opportunities to biologists as well as gathering important new information on species in their natural habitats. Projects funded through this scheme have focused on species such as lowland anoa in Indonesia, amphibians in Belize and human impacts on forests in Ghana. The first project in 2004 to receive grant funding is an investigation into mortalities in flamingo colonies in Kenya.