Building visitor numbers and animal habitats at Dublin Zoo

Leo Oosterweghel lives in one of the most desirable locations in the country. His back garden is Phoenix Park. His neighbours are President Michael D Higgins and US ambassador Kevin O'Malley. And lest he ever be worried about security, Garda Headquarters is across the road .

Still, while living on site at Dublin Zoo would be the dream of most children, it does have a downside. Oosterweghel has to contend with wolves howling in the night, gibbons singing out in the morning, and other animals basically being their normal noisy selves.

“This place is full on,” he says. “I live on site and I’m always on call. But that’s my choice, too. I enjoy what I do and I like animals.”

Oosterweghel (65) has been the director of Dublin Zoo since 2001. He took up the position shortly after the foot-and- mouth outbreak. Dublin Zoo had been closed for three months, and was nearly facing extinction itself.

Originally called the Zoological Gardens Dublin, the zoo opened on September 1st, 1831, which makes it one of the oldest in the world. Only London, Paris and Vienna are older. It had 46 mammals and 72 birds at first, all donated by London Zoo.

Back then it was mainly a place for wealthy Dubliners, with the entrance fee set at an eye-watering six pence – nearly €100 in today’s money. The hoi polloi could visit on Sundays if they paid a penny.

Now, adult tickets cost €16.80 and children €12, with more than one million people visiting the zoo annually. It’s also one of city’s top tourist attractions.

It’s hard to imagine that the zoo was conceived by a group of medical professionals at a meeting held at the Rotunda Hospital. The motives of the medics weren’t entirely animal-centric. They were interested in studying the animals while they were alive – and then using their cadavers for research when they died.

These days, the zoo brings in between €12 million and €13 million a year from ticket sales, the onsite restaurant and shop, says Oosterweghel. Most of the money is plowed back into running costs.

“It is expensive to run a zoo as it is 24/7,” he says. “The zoo may close to the public but it never shuts down. The animals always need care. We always try to have a reserve fund of €1 million to €2 million in case something like foot-and-mouth occurs again, as that causes a big dent.”

Oosterweghel was born in the Netherlands and his first job was in a zoo in Wassenaar in 1966.

“I have always been interested in wildlife from the first time my memory started. My first ever summer job was in a local zoo. It was different in those days, so I got to look after the animals straight away.”

Upon finishing school, Oosterweghel was given the opportunity to work in the Dutch natural history museum, where he spent nearly four years. Then, in his mid-20s, he decided to give it up and see the world.

The world on a budget

“I travelled on a shoestring getting buses and trains. I travelled to Istanbul and from Istanbul all the way to Asia and on to Australia. I went to Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma and East Timor, or Portuguese Timor as it was known then.

“Iran was so hospitable and kind. They took responsibility for this tall, skinny, weird looking Dutchman. I’d hop on the bus and tell the driver where I wanted to go, such as the holy city of Qom. All the people on the bus would share bags of nuts and boiled eggs with me.”

He also travelled around the islands, sleeping on the deck of fishing boats, hopping between the likes of Sumatra, Bali and Java.

“It was the early 1970s, so I travelled with cash – American dollars,” he says. “I had enough with me for the whole trip. You could live well for under a dollar a day in places like Pakistan and India.”

While Oosterweghel had amazing experiences, not all of them are things he likes to remember, such as narrowly missing a hijacker’s massacre at Karachi airport.

Then there was the time he got caught up in a revolutionary gun battle in New Guinea. “There was tribal conflict high up the mountains in New Guinea. I walked in and had no idea what was going on.”

Upon arrival in Australia he took a job in Adelaide Zoo, but it wasn’t long before the travelling bug bit again. In the 1980s he embarked on a second year-and-a-half-long trip, this time travelling from Cairo to Capetown.

“I lost loads of weight on the journey,” he recalls. “There was no food in lots of places I visited. I was starving at times.

“I had to wait six weeks to get a visa for Sudan, which was very frustrating. In Sudan, people would pay for my dinner as I was a visitor to their country. I’d go to a village restaurant and a local would always pay my bill.

“Uganda was very challenging. There would be road blocks, which would try and rip me off.”

Oosterweghel later joined Melbourne Zoo. He became a director within two years and stayed for a further three before leaving to take up the position at Dublin Zoo.

When he arrived, the zoo was at a low point as a result of foot-and-mouth disease. But that wasn’t its very lowest point, he says.

“The lowest point for Dublin Zoo was 1995,” he says. “There was no money. The place was really struggling. Then it managed to get some land from the president to expand, and things have improved since then.”

He says Bertie Ahern played an important role in zoo’s turnaround and expansion by ringfencing €18 million to spend on capital investment.

“When I started in 2001, I knew there was political support. Then the government and taoiseach Bertie Ahern decided Dublin deserved a decent zoo and so money was released.”

As a result of the capital investment programme, the zoo was able to build a number of new attractions over the years, including a gorilla rainforest, the Kaziranga trail, the African Savannah and the World of Cats.

Animals not born in Dublin Zoo are brought in from other zoos, he says. “We don’t buy or sell animals. There is no ownership. We share around animals in zoos.

“We try to create conditions that closely mimic the wild. We have different animals sharing the same space, such as the Rothschild’s giraffe, the common zebra, ostrich and oryx.”

The zoo also has an enrichment programme, used to make the environment animals live in more stimulating. The programme involves varying the way food is presented and hiding it in different places, so the animals have to search for it.

While zoos across Europe were experiencing an average 15 per cent drop in visitor numbers during the recession, Oosterweghel says Dublin bucked the trend.

“The recession hardly affected us,” he says. “We were very worried, but people kept coming. We never reduced prices.

“Through market research we realised people had stopped going to the Canary Islands and Costa Brava. They stayed home but still needed things to do with the kids.”

So what’s the zoo’s biggest competitor?

“The National Aquatic Centre would be our competition. Basically, places where families with children can go on a day out are our competitors.”

Keeping the crowds

To maintain visitor numbers, Oosterweghel says it’s important to do something new every year. This year it opened Sea Lion Cove.

Sometimes, the zoo gets sponsorship for different attractions from companies such as Fyffes, Agri Aware, Masterfoods and Coca-Cola, though Oosterweghel is careful with who he chooses.

“We get sponsorship for different things. It’s not easy. We have to think of the ethics of who we want to tango with. It’s worth a couple of hundred thousand a year. We turned down huge offers before as they didn’t suit or match. That was hard.”

As for the future, Oosterweghel says he is giving up the zoo life any time soon.

“I’m 60-something [he’s 65]. I’m not finished here. I report to a board. They have informed me they’re not sick of me yet.”

CV: Leo Oosterweghel
Name: Leo Oosterweghel
Position: Director of Dublin Zoo
Age: 65
Lives: Dublin Zoo, Phoenix Park
Education: The University of Life
Something you would expect: "I'm passionate about wildlife and animal welfare."
Something that might surprise: "Anything that dies, I don't waste. I have apparatus to prepare it for the learning and discovery centre. Sometimes people ask what the awful smell is. I say it's a blocked drain."