News and Media Releases

Chris West relayed the news by phone. Nelson, the beloved family guinea pig, had died. "Oh, that's so sad," a family friend says. "Are the children upset?"

"Oh no," he replied. "They are just helping post mortem it on the kitchen table."

The West household has always been unconventional. Dr West, chief executive of Adelaide and Monarto zoos, has lived, breathed and celebrated animals his whole life.

It's a passion with roots in Africa, where he spent his early years growing up in the wilds of Nigeria - the son of an English teacher father and Welsh biologist mother on a 12-year "adventure to do something worthwhile".

Dr West, 48, former zoological head of the historic and famous London Zoo, turned heads when he upped and left the prized position to move his family to Adelaide. More than two years on, he is more than happy with his decision.

"I'm here and I love it," he says. "Australia has had long-standing appeal. This organisation is smaller than London but it was already doing some really good education work and field programs.

"I always had a feeling, to be honest, that it was going to take more than one lifetime to sort out some of London Zoo's development, infrastructure and other corporate issues.

"I'm kind of impatient and what is happening around the world is urgent. We have a raging fire in terms of extinction and I don't want to spend my time doing corporate fixing.

"I wanted to go somewhere that my energy can do things more quickly. There's much more opportunity in Adelaide. Maybe there's also a part of me that says my parents had their adventure in Africa, this is mine. The difference is that we will stay."

A veterinary surgeon, Dr West admits he is passionate "to the point of eccentricity" about conservation and educating younger generations. True to his "impatience", he has set to work immediately with Adelaide Zoo and Monarto in "an incredible period of renaissance".

Dr West was an integral part of the giant panda "coup" that secured a minimum 10-year loan of WangWang and Funi at Adelaide Zoo after just six months of negotiations.

The pandas' arrival in October next year has set in motion a flurry of development with a state-ofthe-art panda habitat, a new zoo entry precinct that includes a public piazza and new perimeter fence.

The old ape block is also being transformed into a $4 million "EnviroDome" that is expected to see 85,000 school children visit each year.

At Monarto, a new chimpanzee habitat will be opened in October by famed primatologist Jane Goodall, and in 2010, The Serengeti will be revealed - a 60ha, open-range drive-through exhibit. Overnight accommodation is also planned.

"When I came to Adelaide, I had the feeling Adelaide Zoo was lovely but it had an old fence, it wasn't easy to find and it seemed to have almost turned its back on the parklands and on the city," Dr West says. "So we're moving the main entrance, opening it up and having a public area, a sort of piazza where people can come have coffee.

"There will be a conservation centre which will be an art gallery and a photographic exhibition area - and it's all free. It will be really pretty different to the way other zoos have done it.

"We're 8ha and that's a small zoo but my view is we can do a masterpiece on a small canvas. Expanding the zoo in size is not something we're planning. We don't feel we need to but also the political reality is the parkland and Botanic Park are very precious so I don't know where we'd go."

Dr West says the zoo will follow a mantra of "What we do, we do really well".

A gradual change in the animal population at Adelaide will be played out in coming years with the chimps not the only animals to move out. When the "ancient" male brown bear passes on, he won't be replaced and the giraffes will move out to join the herd at Monarto.

Dr West wants to change the perception of zoos, to educate future decision-makers on conservation, to spread his infectious passion.

"I'm passionate about conservation. I get carried away. It's almost always on my mind," he says.

"I want to encourage people to think about zoos differently. So often people have an almost childhood perception that zoos are animal prisons and that they are purely for entertainment.

"I see Adelaide Zoo and Monarto as conservation organisations that do research, education and support of animals, habitats and communities in the wild. There is a very significant future for zoos and, for all the wrong reasons, zoos are going to be more important.

"With continuing human population growth to nine billion by 2050, there'll be more shrinkage of the wild, likely climate perturbations, habitat destruction, and so on. Zoos will be more important because they will be arks where people can come and be part of conservation of what remains of the living world."

Dr West is savvy enough to realise zoos need to embrace technology and move with the times, making them "stimulating and fun".

For him, this includes a return of the highly publicised Human Zoo in January and a future vision that is hi-tech and hands on.

Zoos in the future will be interactive and multi-sensory," he says. "People will pick up some electronic interpretation and soundtrack on their mobile phone or whatever devices we have in the future. It will all be GPS driven so they can have something hand-held that provides tailored interpretation in whatever language they want, to whatever detail and depth they want to go.

"We'll see fewer animals but they will be in larger enclosures that are more naturalistic. They may be in mixed species so that it's closer to how they would be in the wild.

"Where possible, visitors will be able to walk into enclosures and animals will possibly come out more. We'd actually be taking people on a journey around the world. If you are in a rainforest, you stand in a cubicle to experience what the humidity and temperature would be like. It's not turning the zoo into an electronic theme park, it's making it a layered and multi-sensory experience. The technology exists. It's all doable now and I'd love to see it happen in my time here."

Dr West has no doubt his love affair with the animal kingdom began in Africa. His childhood was filled with exploration and exotic creatures as well as a bout of malaria at age three.

"We were living right out in a pretty remote area," he says. "There was no television, we had an old wind-up gramophone. We had a lot of bush to explore. I had a garden boy, as he was called, assigned to me who was there to protect me from snakes, scorpions and red ants, and things like that.

"There was a cobra in a hole under the garage, there were fruit bats in the trees. I would collect snails and chameleons, and insects of various kinds. It was a great life."

His African life came to an end at age seven when his family moved back to Wales for his education.

"We went to stay with my mother's mother in a little town in north Wales," he says. "It was winter and bitingly cold. I'd never met snow before. So there was this frost-bitten little child going to a very small Welsh school. All the children in the school expected me to be African and I remember their sheer disappointment that I wasn't black.

"It was very strange for me. There were hard streets and I couldn't just wander off. Kids are very adaptable but I remember I'd never worn lace-up shoes - I'd only ever worn sandals."

Early ambitions to become a vet were fed by a "voracious" appetite for books by renowned naturalist and author Gerald Durrell, James Herriot and Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man.

Dr West never intended to work as a standard practice vet. He had his sights set on wild animals and would often wrangle a way to do practical assessment at zoos or in Africa rather than on pig or dairy farms.

A turning point in his studies came in the late 1970s when he spent time with his hero Gerald Durrell at Jersey Zoo. "Durrell was in his prime then," Dr West says. "He was ahead of his time, believing zoos could act as an ark or a lifeline. There were animals at his zoo that weren't big and glamorous like tigers or elephants but animals from Mauritius and the Caribbean and elsewhere that were literally the last ones of their kind.

"The spirit that animated everybody was about conservation. That was the point when I thought I would like to follow that path."

With very few jobs for wildlife vets, Dr West was recruited to teach surgery at the vet school and later did anaesthesia research.

He then accepted a research position for a large pharmaceutical company and ended up as a general manager. Ten years on, however, he realised his job had nothing to do with his interest in animals and made the decision to move on.

He took the position of chief curator at Chester Zoo in Cheshire and was "back on track".

He later won the top job at the "beloved but underfunded national institution" of London Zoo, a role he filled for almost five years before packing his bags for Adelaide.

Dr West and his wife Diane, a biologist, have five children - three daughters, 23, 20, and 19, and two sons 14 and 12. Two of his daughters have followed in his footsteps - one a zoologist, the other on a gap year in Sudan and Uganda before studying veterinary science and following an ambition to become "the next David Attenborough".

His sons are busy raising money to protect orangutans and chimpanzees. "The kids have had this wonderful international cast of people and inspiration," Dr West says. "The girls have had tea with (David) Attenborough, and Jane Goodall has been to stay.

"When I walk around Monarto and I see youngsters having an emotional connection with nature. That to me is what it is about. One of them could be the next David Attenborough.

"It's about changing people's hearts and minds and attitudes.

"In the meantime, it's like a field hospital in a battlefield, fixing up and saving what we can."

Working with animals his whole life, Dr West admits there's a part of him that's not fully grown up. "I suppose that is the case and in a way I hope I do never fully grow up. I want to retain that sort of childlike joy and curiosity," he says.

"I'd like to carry on here until I'm in my sixties.

"The ultimate measure of success for me would be twofold: how many animals have we helped save from extinction, and how many people, particularly youngsters, have we touched and made them live a life in better balance with nature?

"I'll be here for as long as they will have me because there's still a heap of things to be done."

In 60 Seconds

What's your favourite animal?
It's a toss-up between gorillas and rhinos. Rhinos because they are prehistoric, vulnerable and misunderstood. Gorillas because when I was a student I had a fantastic vacation job at Jersey Zoo being playmate to some awesome gorillas.

What pets do you have at home?
At the moment just one dog, an RSPCA rescue dog called Maisie. In the past we've had all sorts of animals - a kinkajou, which is a sort of tropical raccoon, a colony of leaf cutting ants in one of my daughters' bedrooms (they thrived and escaped) and chinchillas, rabbit-sized rodents with a long fluffy tail and native to South America.

What animals should never be kept in a zoo?
There are some that zoos should think very carefully about before they contemplate keeping them ... because of their size, their strength, their intelligence, their social, physical and climatic needs. For example, if you are going to keep polar bears in a warm climate you would have to spend prodigious amounts to make sure you keep them cool. If there isn't a conservation benefit through education or support of a wild population, you'd have to wonder why you'd do it.

Are you a vegetarian?
I am 95 per cent vegetarian. The reason is environmental and I feel healthier that way. I'm conscious of welfare issues so I will eat fish and meat like kangaroo if it is sustainable. My wife and two of my daughters are fully vegetarian and the rest of the family are like me.

What's your opinion ofPETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)?
They can take things too far - they are too strident and unrealistic. They would have an anti-zoo position, but I would say we're about conservation. We're not one of those awful, old-fashioned animal prisons. PETA are incredibly good at publicity and some of their stunts about fur and meat are brilliant. I take my hat off to the way they can seize public attention, but I don't think all of their arguments stand up.

What did you think of (Croc Hunter) Steve Irwin?
I never met Steve. I've met Terri, Bindi and Bob and I think Terri is tremendous - passionate and articulate and a dedicated conservationist. My sense of Steve is that he had this incredible, almost child-like enthusiasm. He brought an audience of millions of youngsters around the world to an interest in wildlife. I think he was a tremendous force for the good.

Which zoo in the world is the ideal model?
There are probably three or four that I have immense respect for (because of) their range and depth of education and the integrity of their conservation work. Jersey Zoo because of Gerald Durrell's spirit; New York's Bronx Zoo because they have a remarkable field program; and a little known zoo called Nordens Ark in Sweden, which has the strongest integrity of any zoo in achieving conservation with a lot of native Scandinavian species.