Animal breeding at Jersey Zoo to be reduced

One of the baby gorillas welcomed at Jersey Zoo

Jersey Zoo is looking at "drastically reducing" its breeding programme of endangered animals.

The chief executive officer of Durrell said Brexit had caused it problems in terms of moving animals.

Lesley Dickie said in the last year British zoos have only been able to move about two to three percent of the animals they normally transfer.

"Brexit has effectively cut us off from the European breeding programmes of which we were very integral members.

"It's really problematic," she told the BBC.

A Defra spokesperson previously said animals could still be moved so long as zoos complied with a country's import conditions.

But Dr Dickie said the zoo was also restricted by legal paperwork used for ensuring rare species were not within in the commercial trade.

Not without risk

As a result, she said the zoo would be forced to "drastically reduce" the animals it breeds.

"We simply won't be able to place them so we have to stop them breeding in the first place," she explained.

Ms Dickie said stopping the animals breeding would not be without its risks.

"It's not like you press a button, they're living beings, you have to check their health, their status, their behaviour, when you stop an animal breeding sometimes there's a problem restarting them breeding," she said.

The alternative for the zoo was to build new exhibits, something she said would cost "hundreds of thousands of pounds".

"That would mean money could not be spent on conservation, collectively we are very high spending on conservation compared with other countries."

Ms Dickie said the zoo was open for discussion on whether Jersey should be part of one legal authority with the UK.

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