The Trust wishes to thank the almost 170,000 visitors, mainly from the greater Wellington urban area, who came to the Zoo this year. We exceeded our performance targets in general visitor numbers, student visitor numbers, Council subsidy per visitor, retail revenue per visitor, and learning outcome effectiveness. These achievements confirm the community's support for the Trust's strategic direction and our programmes and developments, which are helping move us towards making Council funding a lower proportion of our total revenue.

Council is the principal funder of the Wellington Zoo Trust and the Trust is grateful for its support – and for its increased funding of operating grant and capital investment. This enabled us to establish our permanent Roving Guide programme, improve staffing levels in some key areas, and undertake some much-needed work on buildings and other structures.

Highlights

Visitor focus
This year saw the growth of our Close Encounters programme. The aim of the programme is to introduce people to some of the most fascinating creatures with whom we share our planet, helping spread messages of environmental sustainability. As part of this, we began walking the teenage cheetahs on safe harnesses around the Zoo. The cheetahs also form part of an outreach programme, visiting organisations in the Wellington region.

Eva Dixon's Café at the Zoo welcomes large numbers of visitors both on weekends and during the week and the number of regulars confirms its success.

Sponsors
Several sponsors continue to work in partnership with us. Pacific Radiology provides all necessary diagnostic services for our animals. Arataki Honey gives cash and honey for our sun bears, and their staff raise donations for the Free the Bears fund. Tip Top Ice Cream provides promotional support for the biggest day on our events calendar, Children's Day; as well as providing assistance for an enclosure. The Dominion Post partners with us to provide free advertising space, Classic Hits sponsors the red pandas, and Singapore Airlines provided a keeper with free transport to bring the cheetah cubs from South Africa.

A number of benefactors contributed to new exhibits and amenities for both animals and visitors during the year. We would like to thank them for their support. The Community Trust of Wellington, the Unison Trust, the Licensing Trust Authority, and Pub Charity warrant special mention. We also received a grant from the Lotteries Grants Board, which has helped with work on an oral history of the Zoo.

Wellington Zoo's horticultural capability has increased this year and we have had generous support from many Wellington companies in this regard: Hirepool, Magnum Industries Ltd., Ablaze, and Drogue Construction Ltd.

Since the year's end, we have been thrilled that Southern Cross Hospitals has offered generous gifts of surplus medical equipment for our operating theatre in the new hospital. The hospital will be a major community facility that will be extremely valuable to partners such as the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary and the Department of Conservation. It will enable us to make an even greater contribution to veterinary research in Wellington.

We offer our warm thanks to all of these organisations for their support of the Zoo.

Financial
We are pleased with the Trust's operating result for the year which produced a nominal surplus of $3,000. Admissions revenue increased by 26% over 2003/04 – a particularly strong result in the context of growth in the wider economy. Other corporate revenue increased by 18%. These increases have come about because of new programme initiatives – notably the Close Encounters and the Roving Guides – as well as infrastructure developments such as the café and the red panda exhibit. This confirms that the community recognises the value of the improved experience at the Zoo.

During the year we were delighted to transfer, free of cost to Wellington City Council, $419,000 worth of new infrastructure assets, representing a major contribution to the Wellington community by the Zoo Trust.

Infrastructure improvements
While we are pleased with the programmes we have been able to offer this past year, we acknowledge we have some way to go in replacing outdated infrastructure. The modern zoo liberates animals from unkind enclosures, giving them attractive, naturalistic spaces and human contexts that provoke us to think about the world. We are pleased to say good progress is being made with Wellington City Council in planning the much-needed upgrades.

Since its opening in September, the red panda exhibit – Nigalya Ponya Valley, largely funded by the New Zealand Community Trust – has attracted positive comment from visiting zoo experts as one of the best new zoo exhibits in Australasia. This evaluation is significant in light of the fact that Wellington Zoo's animals are provided by a regional zoo network that manages the regional population collaboratively and monitors welfare.

Over the past year the Trust has continued to develop its blueprint for the Zoo site in Newtown. The challenge is to be cost-effective, as befits a small city zoo, yet innovative, as befits Wellington. The Trust has developed the first integrated full site development plan for the Zoo. The plan gives physical expression to the Trust's Strategic Plan, which was developed in 2003/04 and approved by Council in early 2004, and which gives life to the objectives of the Zoo Trust Deed.

The Trust has consulted with international and domestic experts in zoo design, community representatives, and staff in this process and will in the near future present the plans to Council for approval.

The Trust focuses on education and conservation and so this year we began to be more systematic about sustainability, embarking on an environmental management audit of the site. We also started water-saving initiatives by fitting rain water collection tanks. This is an on-going programme of retro-fitting or building into new developments and we have plans to reticulate this water to our exhibits and gardens. As these developments are put in place, we will engage with our visitors about the benefits and about how they can implement similar sustainable practices at home.

The Trust Board

Following the local government elections, we welcomed Celia Wade-Brown as our new Wellington City Council representative, and said farewell to David Major. David made an enormously valuable contribution to the Trust in his time on the Trust Board and we thank him for his time, energy and expert guidance during this very important start-up phase of the Trust. We also wish to thank all the Trustees for their continuing support and contribution to the Trust's goals this year.

The Zoo Crew

The Trust Board offers its heartfelt thanks to the Zoo crew. The level of commitment and expertise at the Wellington Zoo is exceptional and does our Zoo and our city great credit. As a result of our CEO's focus on planning this year, Life Sciences manager Mauritz Basson has been acting as Chief Operating Officer, and veterinarian, Dr Katja Geschke, stepped into Mauritz's shoes as Life Sciences manager. This has had a domino effect on many of the Zoo crew, who have ably stepped up into leadership roles.

The Roving Guides programme is now in full swing. The Guides play a key part in bringing animals and visitors closer together and are able to help people follow their own lines of interest about the animals they are seeing, conservation, and the role of modern zoos. Public response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Looking Forward

In planning for the Zoo's future, we commissioned research into whether the Zoo would be able to raise the necessary funds to complement the contribution of Council as we embark on our programme of development. The research was positive but insistent. The Wellingtonians interviewed were overwhelmingly supportive of our plans to create a more interactive, sustainable and conservation-focused zoo and very clear that Wellington's much-loved zoo simply had to be modernised.

The next major undertaking is the redevelopment of the very old chimpanzee indoor quarters, a complex engineering and design project. Our chimpanzee group is internationally known and this exhibit will be watched with interest by the zoo world. The working areas have been designed to allow us to embark on an assisted reproduction programme with this group. Introducing new animals to existing groups involves very complicated logistics and high levels of risk. As a result we have begun to look at current developments in human assisted reproduction as a possible avenue for renewing bloodlines without putting individual chimps or the group at risk. Renewal of the genetic pool will become a pressing issue over the next decade and we need to start conditioning work with the chimpanzees as soon as possible. Construction work on this development will begin in September 2005.

So these tasks lie ahead. The Trust has a challenging future as we balance our Trust Deed obligations to promote conservation and education and bring new species to the Zoo as well as manage and renew ageing assets. Animal welfare and human health and safety are crucial in a new Zoo environment and the Trust is grateful for Wellington City Council’s support and the Mayor’s leadership in this regard, and at the same time we’re mindful of the need to become more financially self-supporting. In our programme we strive to offer an attractive and affordable day out while deeply engaging visitors in the many conservation issues modern Zoos, and modern societies, face. Quite a juggle.

In the immediate future, we are planning exciting events to celebrate the Zoo's hundredth year. Among these will be completion of an oral history, an historical exhibition, and a programme of international and domestic speakers. The gala year will culminate in our hosting the A RAZPA 2007 annual conference.

We thank Wellingtonians for their support. We assure you we’re facing the future with your needs in mind.

Neale Pitches Chairperson 10 August 2005		Alison Lash Chief Executive 10 August 2005