Goats at Noah's Ark Zoo Farm |
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| Date opened | 1998–1999 |
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| Location | Wraxall, North Somerset, United Kingdom |
| Land area | 100 acres (40 ha) |
| Annual visitors | 120,000[1] |
| Website | www.noahsarkzoofarm.co.uk |
Noah's Ark Zoo Farm is a 100-acre (40 ha) tourist attraction—a zoo and entertainment centre based around a working farm—in Wraxall, North Somerset, about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Bristol, England.
The zoo has been criticised for promoting creationism.[2][3] In December 2009 it was expelled from the zoo industry's regulatory body for bringing the association into disrepute following a BBC investigation into its links with the Great British Circus.
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For 35 years, Noah's Ark proprietors Anthony and Christina Bush worked Moat House Farm as tenant dairy farmers. In 1995 they purchased the farm, sold the Friesian herd,[4] and converted the farm's 310 acres (130 ha) to arable land and sheep raising.[1]
In its early years, the zoo exhibited farm animals, small domestic animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs, and some exotics such as wallabies, rheas and llamas. In the early 21st century, the collection expanded to include tamarins, lemurs, marmosets, a "finch fountain," meerkats, camels, tigers, african lions, white rhinos, bison, giraffes, capybara, zebra, tapirs, prairie dogs, emu, ostriches, agoutis, coatis, maras and various reptiles.[1] The zoo promotes animal protection and conservation, especially emphasising white rhinos, Siamang gibbons, and black and white ruffed lemurs.[5] A webcam at the zoo showed the live birth of a male Brazilian tapir in April 2009.[6] New animals to the zoo in 2011 included five poison dart frogs.[7]
Other attractions include twelve indoor play areas,[8] a stage and seating for 500, and an indoor "Beehive Maze".[1] In 2009 a wind turbine was installed to cut energy costs and reduce the zoo's carbon footprint.[9] The zoo reports more than 130,000 visitors annually.[1]
On 1 September 2011, Ann Widdecombe launched the zoo's "Elephant Eden" facility,[10] an elephant sanctuary designed to house four elephants. It is set to become the largest elephant sanctuary of its kind in Europe at 20 acres (80,000 m2).[11] The Born Free Foundation has criticised the scheme as being to small for its purpose.[12]
The zoo's hedge maze, planted in 2003, is 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) long.[13] It has two parts; one is a large rectangle in green beech (representing Noah's Ark), in the other part seven 'monster animals' outlined in copper beech. Green beech cuttings are used to feed the camels and giraffes.[14]
Noah’s Ark is a member of the Green Tourism Business Scheme [15] (GTBS) and won the Silver award from the GTBS in 2009 in recognition of its efforts to be sustainable[16] The zoo holds the Quality Badge from the Learning Outside the Classroom Scheme, a national award which Noah’s Ark received for the quality of its educational programme for schools.[17] Noah’s Ark is a Quality Assured Visitor Attraction. The scheme is managed by VisitEngland [18] and monitors the customer experience at visitor attractions across England.
In October 2009 the BBC and the Captive Animals Protection Society charged that the zoos tigers and camels were owned by the Great British Circus and that the owners had kept this arrangement secret from visitors and from the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA). The zoo owners replied that the zoo did not hold circus tigers and that its tigers came from Linctrek Ltd, a DEFRA-licensed collection that provides animals for films, television and zoos, and that Noah's Ark had accurately described the source of their tigers to interested visitors as a 'private collection'.[19] One of the directors of Linctrek, Martin Lacey, is also the owner of the Great British Circus.[20]
A BBC programme showed a tiger's head in a freezer at the farm and described the burial of a deceased tiger on the zoos private farmland contrary to DEFRA regulations. The documentary described how the head, paws and skin were kept with the owners permission and the intention to display these articles for educational purposes.[21]
In December 2009, BIAZA terminated the zoo from its membership for what it claimed was the refusal of NAZF to provide BIAZA requested information and for bringing "the association into disrepute."[22]
Earlier in the year, the Western Animal Rights Network (WARN) and the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS) made several claims of animal cruelty against the zoo, and charged that it regularly culled animals during winter months to reduce costs. The zoo denied these charges and explained that it had euthanised some chickens to protect the quality of the flock.[23] In March 2010, an investigation by North Somerset Council into the claims made found that all CAPS allegations of animal cruelty against the zoo were "grossly unfair". However, zoo inspectors said there were some failures to comply with the Secretary of State's Standards of Modern Zoo Practice. As a result tighter licence conditions were imposed including bringing independent vets in to check every six months.[24]
Anthony Bush is an Oxford graduate and Anglican Christian who advocates creationism.[3] The Bushes named the zoo farm for the biblical Noah's Ark, and zoo displays argue the historical truth of both creation and Noah's flood.[2][25] Bush has said, 'From the outside, our farm is not overtly Christian. But, from the inside, we are very strongly Christian. I am a Creationist, and we see the farm as a mission station to give people scientific permission to believe in God'.[26]
Although Anthony Bush believes in Noah's Ark,[2] he does not accept flood geology and believes that age of the earth is 100,000 years old—much older than the 6,000-10,000 years that Young Earth creationists believe, but much younger than the 4.54 billion year accepted by scientific consensus and Old Earth creationists.[27]
Bush claims to be offering a mediating origins hypothesis despite scientific consensus that the fossil record contains evidence of common descent and that radiometric dating is not inaccurate:
We argue the case for a new approach encompassing a creator God AND pre-programmed evolution to provide variation and adaptation. We believe the fossil record does not show one evolutionary tree of life; instead possibly diversification of a number of body forms instead. Geological dating methods currently used may be inaccurate and thus earth history timescales could be very different from those presumed.'[28]
The zoo has been criticised by the anti-creationist British Centre for Science Education for 'contradicting vast swaths of science needed to pass public examinations'.[29][30] Medical doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre, author of the Bad Science column in The Guardian, especially criticised the zoo's statement, 'To follow Darwinism is to recognise only the fleshly side of our natures, and, as we know, the flesh perishes; Darwinism, in other words, is a philosophy of death'. To which Goldacre retorted, 'Harsh words. Bring on the darkness'.[31] Goldacre also said that the attraction had 'the distinction of being the only pseudoscience zoo in the UK'.[32] In February 2009 psychology professor Bruce Hood, director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol,[33] described the zoo proprietor as 'the delightful but completely delusional Anthony Bush' and claimed that although Bush had rejected young creationism, he 'had constructed an elaborate but equally unscientific account of life on earth'.[34] In August 2009, the British Humanist Association urged tourist boards to stop promoting the zoo out of concern that it might 'undermine education and the teaching of science',[35] and vicar Michael Roberts, an authority on Darwin and geology,[36] agreed that the BHA was 'justified in criticising' the zoo and argued that church groups should have been more forthright in their criticism.[37]
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