The Good Zoo Guide

by John Ironmonger, Les Grandy (Illustrator)

Over 14 million people visit zoos in Britain every year, making the zoo over a #40 million industry. However, the 130 zoos, including wildlife parks, aquaria, butterfly collections and safaris, range from excellent through worthy but dull, to really dreadful. About 80 are true zoos - with mammal and reptile collections - and of those, 31 are recommended in this book as worth a visit. This guide provides the reader with an introduction to the history, functions and moral justifications for running a zoo, the problems, benefits and techniques of keeping the animals, an appraisal of each zoo and a guide to all the animal species currently kept in British collections. John Ironmonger is a professional zoologist with connections to Chester Zoo.

192 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 1992

About the author

I'm the author of 'Not Forgetting the Whale', (also called 'The Whale at the End of the World',) 'The many Lives of Heloise Starchild,' The Coincidence Authority,' ('Coincidence' in the USA), and 'The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder.'

I'm a Cornishman who was born in Kenya, schooled in Kent, studied in Nottingham and Liverpool, and worked in Nigeria, Slough, Manchester, Edinburgh, Warrington, Warwick and Glasgow. Now I live in Parkgate on the Wirral peninsula overlooking the RSPB marshes.

My lovely wife Sue and I are possibly the only non Indonesians ever to have seen a Javan rhino and her calf. True. You can read about it on my blog at http://notablebrain.blogspot.co.uk/20...

Apart from my family and my writing, my third passion is travel. I've been posting some of my random map pins on my blog. You can follow my blog here: https://notablebrain.blogspot.com/