Twycross Zoo

The opening ceremony was performed by Jean Morton, a local television personality, accompanied by her popular children's TV puppet show characters Tingha and Tucker.

Molly achieved many world firsts during her leadership, from breeding animals successfully through to being a founder member of the National Federation of Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland.

Many of the animals at Twycross Zoo are part of conservation breeding programmes which help ensure a future for species threatened with extinction.

The animal exhibits at Twycross Zoo are split into eight zones: Conservation Way is home to a family of critically endangered Amur leopards, the world's rarest big cats.

In June 2014, female Kristen gave birth to cubs Arina and Alexei after joining Twycross-born male Davidoff in 2013 as part of a European Association of Zoos and Aquariums breeding programme.

The Borneo Longhouse walkthrough exhibit was opened in 2007 by actor Brian Blessed and the Malaysian High Commissioner, His Excellency Datuk Abd Aziz Mohammed.

[6] The exhibit, built to replicate a traditional longhouse, provides a naturalistic environment for the birds which live there, and enables visitors to walk inside the aviary and see first-hand the importance of wetland habitats throughout the world.

This zone is also home to michies tufted deer, tortoises, giraffes, nyala, black rhinoceros and Sumatran tigers.

This large reserve provides a safe and secure home for native bats, birds, insects and small mammals.

[2] Amongst others, the zoo holds the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge, all sessions are curriculum linked and all are designed to best engage all age groups.

As well as financial support Twycross Zoo provides expertise in animal and veterinary care, enclosure construction and design and behavioural welfare.

Twycross Zoo currently supports the following conservation projects: In February 2014 Twycross Zoo partnered with the United Nations Great Ape Survival Partnership to assist them in their goal to ensure the long-term survival of great apes and their habitat in Africa and Asia.

[9] Tara, a hand-reared supposedly Bengal tigress acquired from Twycross Zoo in July 1976, was trained by Billy Arjan Singh and reintroduced to the wild in Dudhwa National Park, India with the permission of India's then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in an attempt to prove the experts wrong that zoo-bred hand-reared tigers could never be released in the wild with success.

It was proved later that Twycross Zoo had been irresponsible and maintained no breeding records, and had given India a hybrid Siberian-Bengal tigress instead, although at the time, and taking into account information received regarding all of the tigers kept at Twycross Zoo, it was believed that Tara was a pure Bengal tiger at that time.

Twycross Zoo is now recognised as having a database of the animals in its care, both current and historically, that is comparable to any major zoological garden worldwide.

Norton Grange 2007
An orangutan in the zoo in 2008