Dudley Zoo celebrates highest visitor number in three decades

The Castle Hill attraction has welcomed its 300,000th visitor through the turnstiles as it prepares to mark its 80th birthday next year.

Chief executive Derek Grove, who only took over the site last April with his family, is delighted with the increasing numbers, which are 10 per cent up on last year, and almost double those they were seeing through the turnstiles 10 years ago.

Mr Grove said: "It's been an incredible 12 months and to hit 300,000 before the end of the year is an amazing early Christmas present for all staff.

"We haven't seen these kind of figures in over three decades and just 10 years ago in 2006 we saw 165,000 people visit, which we've almost doubled.

In 2015 the total number of people who visited was 279,599, but this year that amount was already reached in early November.

Derek added: "During the last 12 months we've invested heavily across the 40 acres, opening a new lorikeet walkthrough exhibit, macaques on the bank, a refurbished flamingo enclosure and a black howler monkey exhibit and giant anteater enclosure, plus we've introduced new animal species for Dudley Zoological Gardens, which in turn have all enhanced our visitor experience.

"In addition to the animals we've had a very busy three weeks on site for Santa's grotto in Dudley Castle and we expect to break last year's record by Christmas Eve.

"From everyone at Dudley Zoological Gardens we'd like to say thank you to everyone for their continued support and we look forward to breaking even more records next year during our 80th year."

Not only is the zoo attracting many more people, but those attending have also given lots of positive feedback.

The zoo site, which includes an 11th century castle and limestone caverns, won TripAdvisor 2016 Certificate of Excellence.

The award is presented to those tourist attractions and facilities which succeed in gaining consistently high ratings on the popular TripAdvisor travel website.

The zoo, which opened in May 1937, covers approximately 40 acres.

Much of the animal collection is linked to international conservation and breeding programmes and several of the zoo's global projects have received awards.

Endangered species at the zoo include Asiatic lions, Sumatran tigers, Bornean orangutans, Tibetan red pandas, Rothschild giraffes, Madagascan lemurs and Humboldt penguins.