South Lakes Safari Zoo looses licence extension.

I would visit a well-run zoo - you can, of course, check them out online to find out their 'mission statement' on conservation.

Bristol Zoo is supposed to fund wonderful conservation projects but their lions are kept in a very small enclosure and get distressed by late night events held there.
Two sides to the story:
www.peta.org.uk/blog/bristol-zoo-parties-lion-stress/
www.bristolzoo.org.uk/save-wildlife/conservation-and-research

It's worrying that they have some very endangered animals, Snow Leopards and Sumatran Tigers for instance which will now need a home.

How could they have got away with this for so long - is there no system for routine inspections except by councils when the licence is up for renewal?

I expect the snow leopards and Sumatran tigers could be found homes (if zoos who are prepared to take them have suitable enclosures - which are very expensive to build to the proper standard, and can't be done in a hurry)

I have been reading some accounts of the many deaths, and a few of them (not all) seem unavoidable. One giraffe was euthanased when it couldn't stand. Giraffes are notoriously suseptible to problems if they fall, and difficult to get back on their feet, and it may be that euthanasia was better than leaving it to suffer. The other giraffe is thought to have died of an e. coli enfection. As the zoo allows visitors to feed the giraffes, perhaps it acquired that from a visitor, and perhaps exposing the animals to bugs brought in from outside is not a good thing?

BIAZA home page
and Find a BIAZA zoo or aquarium

The Captive Animals' Prevention Society, a watchdog that investigates UK zoos, said that animals were also at risk at other attractions
There's a lot of stuff we know about and it's not the case that they are squeaky clean
It said that it had identified at least eight zoos, which it did not name, as being a cause for concern following tip-offs from former employees and members of the public.

Maddy Taylor, the group's campaigns officer, told The Times: "SLSZ is a particularly bad case but things are happening in zoos around the country and people don't know about it

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/06/eight-zoos-identified-causes-concern-animal-welfare-tip-offs/

They don't name them - I hope that they have reported the names to SOMEONE so that they can be identified and action taken to have them charged with offences. If BIAZA members are among them - which they should not be! - then I assume that they would be struck off and no longer be able to display the logo and claim to be up to the required standard.

Have just read today that other zoos have a smililar (if not higher) incidence of animal deaths in the same period . The figure given (to condemn) South Lakes is similar to other "highly regarded" zoos. Animals die and are sadly euthanized for various reasons and I think we should look at the figures and compare them (fairly) before we condemn South Lakes Safari Park. Apparently (and I quote) "EAZA does not publish records or advertise the number of healthy animals that die and are euthanized every year. However the executive director estimates that this number iis somewhere between 3000 and 5000 every year in European zoos. But this could be anything from a tadpole to a giraffe"
Still not entirely sure that there is more to this than meets the eye.

SLSP may have been caught in a spiral of disaster - dropping visitor numbers after the tiger attack, leading to lower gate money and less income to do maintenance and buy in feedstuffs, then an emphasis on continuously producing attractive babies to pull in more visitors and get the funds up, without considering the need to house and care for those animals as they got older, which all then led to overcrowding, bad nutrition and lack of health care. Add in an owner who couldn't cope and had lost interest and things would go from bad to worse very quickly.

Managing a zoo is not like either any other kind of visitor attraction or a farm. There has to be a balance between the business side of balancing the books, the educational and environmental side, and the responsibility of managing the long-term lives of many different species.