Dublin Zoo seeks elephants sponsor as it awaits birth of three calves

The good news for Dublin Zoo is that Bernhardine, or "Dina", the matriarch of its elephant herd, is pregnant. So is Yasmin, Dina's little sister. And so is Anak, Yasmin's daughter.

All three elephants are due to give birth between June and October this year, and their calves expected to draw in tens of thousands of additional visitors. To coincide with its planned “Year of the Elephant”, Dublin Zoo has decided to bring in a sponsor to the part of the site where the herd hangs out, the Kaziranga Forest Trail.

"For an ideal fit, we are looking for a trusted family brand," says the zoo's marketing manager Emma Kiernan. The zoo is now taking its offer to the market, highlighting to potential sponsors that this is the chance to make "an emotional connection with families".

Dublin Zoo attracts more than 1 million visitors a year, and 88 per cent of them are from the domestic rather than tourism market. Some 86 per cent of the adults that buy tickets are accompanied by children, while 73 per cent of the adults are aged 25-44 and 67 per cent are women. Of the children that visit, 88 per cent are under the age of 11.

When Kituba, a baby gorilla, was born at the zoo in 2011, it led to a 60,000 increase in visitors in the following month, and Dublin Zoo expects an even bigger uplift from the arrival of the elephant calves. “It’s going to be huge,” says Kiernan. The first of the three births is expected in June, but as elephants’ gestation period is somewhere between 20 and 22 months, the exact timing is even harder to predict than it is for humans. “They are spaced out, but in theory they could all go on the same day,” she says.

The three pregnancies follow the arrival of bull elephant Upali from Chester Zoo in 2012. The herd also includes Asha, who was the first elephant calf born in the Republic when she was born to Dina in February 2007, while Yasmin’s bull calf Budi, born in 2008, was moved to Antwerp Zoo in 2012 as part of an international breeding programme.

The Kaziranga Trail sponsorship is expected to take Dublin Zoo’s annual sponsorship income to €250,000 and it will be the final deal that it seeks. “We are very careful not to over-commercialise the zoo,” says Kiernan. “We won’t go for another one.”

The not-for-profit zoo has three existing commercial relationships visible on the site. Fyffes sponsors the Gorilla Rainforest, Kelloggs sponsors the South American House (home to species including monkeys, tortoises and parrots) and charitable trust Agri-Aware is the partner on its Family Farm.

The additional revenue will go into its Pacific Coast habitat, which is set to undergo a €3 million renovation project. This will see the Californian sea lions moved to a larger new home, more than twice the size of their existing habitat, while the colony of breeding flamingos will move to a free flight aviary.

Dublin Zoo was given public funding up until 2012, which “helped transform us”, says Kiernan. Among the projects it financed was the building of the bull house for Upali (male elephants like to have their own space). “Now we’re able to stand on our own two feet,” she says.

Turnover amounted to €11 million last year, and the zoo’s operational costs arrived at €10 million, leaving it with a surplus of €1 million to reinvest back in the operation and in the conservation projects it supports. Sponsorship income will help bridge the gap between the surpluses it has saved and the cost of the Pacific Coast project.

The zoo follows a "let elephants be elephants" approach to caring for the mammals, says operations manager Gerry Creighton, and the Kaziranga Forest Trail has been designed to allow the elephants "develop healthy social relationships".

Given Upali has been “a busy boy”, as Kiernan puts it, the plan appears to be succeeding.