Biodiversity Action Plan

Highland Wildlife Park is in an unique location; it is a zoo located within the UK’s largest national park. The Cairngorms National Park is an important biodiversity hotspot, providing a last refuge for many UK-native species. To improve the biodiversity at Highland Wildlife Park we are working alongside other local landowners to help safeguard species in the National Park. 

Alongside the incredible animals we care for at Highland Wildlife Park, we also play host to a wide variety of native species thanks to the variety of natural habitats on our site. Our Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) is designed to enhance the quality of the habitats we have at the park thereby boosting the amount of biodiversity present on site. 

An important part of the BAP involves cataloguing what native species we have on site. We run a staff WhatsApp group to keep track of what species our nature-obsessed team have spotted and work with specialists on lichens and fungi to help us understand what species currently call the site home, and what we can do to encourage even more. 

Our habitat management work includes improving the amount of wildflower meadows on site via careful management and planting. We have a forestry management plan to improve the quality and diversity of our woodland areas and work very hard to remove invasive species like Japanese rose and controlling bracken to allow other plants to flourish. We have a long-term monitoring programme for the wading birds on site, including red-listed species like lapwing and curlew, and are investigating nesting success in these species. The park plays host to the nationally scarce small scabious mining bee, we conduct annual surveys of this species and habitat improvement to ensure this special bee will always have a home with us.