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Yorkshire Wildlife Park scoops two top awards in National Zoo (BIAZA) Awards

Yorkshire Wildlife Park won two of the top awards from the zoo world last night following a prestigious awards ceremony held at Paignton Zoo Environmental Park, Devon attended by some 100 people from zoos and wildlife parks around the country. This is the first time that YWP has entered these national awards and it is a major achievement for Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which only opened in April 2009.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park was commended in recognition for Best Marketing Project for its innovative campaign www.comparethemeerkatbabies.com  and for Best PR Project for Lion Rescue. A certificate was presented to Director Cheryl Williams by Adrian Sanders MP.

The PR Award particularly highlights the YWP’s campaign to rescue 13 lions from Oradea Zoo earlier this year and to raise awareness in animal welfare and the problems that face many Eastern European Zoos. Over £150,000 was raised through a campaign launched by the News of the World and press coverage of the rescue and the lions rehabilitation equated to over £1.5 m advertising value. Twycross Zoo, ZSL London Zoo and Bristol Zoo were commended in this category.

The Best Marketing Project was for the website www.comparethemeerkatbabies.com  which was launched to follow the progress of meerkat babies born at the Park, with daily blog, videos and photographs of their development. It helped to educate visitors to the site (averaging over 10,000 a day)   on the daily trials and tribulations of a modern meerkat family. It also helped raise awareness for YWP in its first summer and generated lots of press coverage due to the tongue in cheek website name which alluded to the popular TV ad meerkats for www.comparethemarket.com . (Watch out – coming next is the Meer-y-Kat Christmas Grotto with Meerkat Santa and his pals!) ZSL London Zoo, Bristol Zoo and Paradise Wildlife Park were commended in this category. 

Yorkshire Wildlife Park won two of 12 categories, chosen from 74 entries. Held annually for over a decade, the BIAZA awards recognise outstanding contributions and achievements in the fields of wildlife conservation, advances in animal welfare and husbandry, marketing, PR, education, research, and enclosure design.

Other award winning programmes included

Dr Miranda Stevenson, Director of BIAZA said: “The award-winning programmes showcased today demonstrate the huge investment of energy and resources made by our leading zoos to improve animal welfare and raise environmental awareness.

“These awards recognise and celebrate the vital contributions that our members are making to conservation and education each year. Equally, they are standard bearers for excellence in animal husbandry and welfare. We congratulate all the winners on their achievement.”

 

http://www.yorkshirewildlifepark.net/