Jersey Zoo – Gerard Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

Gerard Durell wanted to protect animals from extinction and he managed to do that as far as the Mauritius kestrel species is concerned. Jersey Zoo houses almost one hundred animal species and most of them are severely threatened and endangered.

Jersey Zoo is specialised in the exact and specific treatments that need to be applied in order to preserve the rarest species in the world. Some of the animals you may find at the Durrell Jersey Zoo are rare bats, pigeons, ducks, snakes, tortoise, lowland gorillas, Andean bears, Sumatran ourangutans, maned wolves, lemurs of Madagascar , cowned cranes, poison dart frogs, ibis, snails, iguanas and many more.

These species we have mentioned are rare ones and offer more interest for scientist but this doesn’t mean at all that any kind of visitor won’t have an excellent and surprising day at the Gerard Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

There is a certain gorilla species present at the Jersey Zoo ever since they first opened. The gorilla family lives in Jersey Zoo since 1959 and Gerald Durell himself has brought them there when the zoo opened. This family is still there and is one of the main attractions of the park.

They have two bedrooms of their own and a large outdoor playground. There are five members part of this family: Ya Kwanza - the leader and Jambo’s successor, and other four female members. Jambo was the zoo’s famous gorilla that managed to transform the world’s entire opinion about gorillas. Ya Kwanza was the first gorilla in the world to be conceived through artificial insemination.

The future plans for the Gerard Durell Wildlife Conservation Trust is the extension of the gorillas’ complex so that maybe a more numerous gorilla family would be able to live there or maybe the opportunity for the gorillas to socialise with other species.  

The Gerard Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust consists in 31 acres (130,000 m²) of amazing sights and pure nature. The presence of all types of flowers and trees makes the Jersey Zoo the perfect place for all kind of visitors like birds and insects. There are many birds nests around the park that are normally used by swallows, kestrels, barn owls and martins. Walking through the park you will definitely get a chance to see the bank vole, red squirrels and the short-toed tree creeper- a rare animal that commonly can not be seen in the United kingdom.

Here are some of the endangered species that can be seen at Durell Wildlife Conservation Trust: 

The ploughshare 

The Floreana Mockingbird 

The Pygmy Hog 

Amphibians from Latin America 

The Saint Lucia Parrot 

Livingstone’s Fruitbat 

Durrell’s Night Gecko 

These are only few out of the 40 endangered species that can be seen at the Jersey Zoo, some of them managed to get through the crisis and overcome the difficulties and are now a species in recovery but others are not so lucky, there are still efforts to be done in order to save them.