Darren McGarry - The history of Edinburgh Zoo

The Club welcomed Darren McGarry, Head of Living collections at Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park and an expert in pandas and ungulated to give a talk on the history of Edinburgh Zoo.

Establishing a new Zoo in Edinburgh was the brainchild of Thomas Gillespie, a prolific writer who had a huge interest in Hamburg Zoo. He was also a fan of the zoological society of New York and this led him to wanting to build a new zoo in Edinburgh. There was already a Zoo in Edinburgh but this was a slum Zoo with large animals such as lions kept in small cages. 

He worked with Lord Salvesen and in 1909 a zoological society was formed. The Zoo was built on Corstorphine Hill House originally built in 1793, for £17000 which included 75 acres of land. 

The Zoo opened on 22 July 1913 after being designed by Patrick Geddes.

A large number of penguins were provided thanks to Lord Salvesen and many animals borrowed – lions, camels etc for the first 8 months.

In 1913. It became the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland – the only Royal Zoo in the UK.

Darren also talked about the role of zoos, discussing their move from entertainment in Victorian times to their current role in education and development which includes an ex-situ breeding programme, in situ conservation programmes as well as zoo and wildlife research.

Animals have not been taken form the wild since the 1950s.

For those who are interested, webcams are available on the Zoo website for the public to see the animals.

Finally, Ken Lindsay thanked Darren for an excellent and interesting talk