Conservation in Action 2025 (EXTERNAL SHARE) - Flipbook - Page 14
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SCIENCE AND TRAINING
As an organisation underpinned by science and evidence, 2025 saw signi昀椀cant growth in our scienti昀椀c
output. Using science and data to inform decision making is essential across all elements of our charity.
Data and science enables us to measure our impact, record evidence, and make changes to improve.
In 2025, we increased the postgraduate research being supervised by our teams in collaboration with
partner universities, providing excellent training opportunities for future conservation scientists.
Our scientists coauthored five peer reviewed publications with a further four
in review, and supervised six PhD students, covering multi-disciplinary topics
from animal welfare to population genetics, zoo engagement and behaviour
change, to the use of artificial intelligence for behaviour monitoring.
On top of this, our long-term partnership with the University of Nottingham School of Veterinary Medicine
and Science goes from strength to strength, with a total of 31 vet students trained in 2025, truly making
Twycross Zoo a hub for conservation science training and education.
Guests and supporters
None of our work as a conservation charity would be possible without you, our guests, and without the
wonderful 500 animals that we care for. Animals bring people together, from a child’s 昀椀rst glimpse of a
towering gira昀昀e to a family’s joint experience together watching our troop of inquisitive bonobos play
and interact. These moments are special. Animals capture our imagination, provide hope, and inspire
us to do better. In 2025 we opened our new animal habitat Close Encounters, designed to facilitate
wow moments with our animals, and support our Goal One targets. Crucially, this area also provided
an opportunity for us to contribute directly to species conservation, with more than 60% of the carefully
selected species included classi昀椀ed as Endangered or worse on the IUCN Red list.
These are the species that we must utilise our efforts to protect and inspire
people about – as without our help, they have no future.
Your continued support to our conservation charity was incredible, and in 2025 we welcomed 853,268
guests including 47,715 school learners. We held meaningful conversations with at least 188,874 of our
guests, inspiring them to make positive changes for wildlife as part of our Goal Three targets. We also
launched a new Universal Credit tickets scheme to increase accessibility to our zoo, providing a total of
4,258 signi昀椀cantly discounted tickets to people who otherwise would not have been able to visit. Towards
the end of the year, we welcomed 109,077 guests to our Lanterns of the Wild event, featuring over 2,000
larger than life animal lantern sculptures, across ten global habitats, including educational resources to
help inspire wonder for the natural world.
