Bristol Zoo’s project will focus on six species facing extinction

The charity behind the Bristol Zoo project has pledged to help save 97 endangered species.

Animals include small creatures such as birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, as well as larger species such as gorillas, giraffes and lemurs.

Of these, Bristol Zoological Society will support six species, including black blue-eyed lemurs – of which a male and female pair already live at the Bristol Zoo Project.

The charity will support conservation projects around the world involving those six species.

Brian Zimmerman, the society’s director of conservation and science, said they had chosen “neglected species” that needed a champion “to save them from extinction”.

As well as the critically endangered lemurs that the charity is working to protect in Madagascar, the new program focuses on the turquoise pygmy gecko found in Tanzania, the black pigeon in the Philippines, the Ankarafa skeleton frog in Madagascar and the Corfu carp in Madagascar. Greece.

The scheme also includes an endangered species native to the UK – the white-clawed crayfish, for which the society is already running a captive breeding and reintroduction programme.

Zimmerman said the society works in nine countries on four continents, adding: “Every species on this list needs our help to survive.”

He said the six species highlighted by the charity “reflect the range of countries we work in and are from very small geographical locations where together with local partners, we are working to save them from extinction”.

A new conservation area will also be created on the Bristol Zoo Project site in the north-west of the city.

The first phase is scheduled to begin in the coming months and will see the creation of a new Central African forest habitat that will become home to the zoo’s existing western lowland gorillas.

The gorillas will be joined by cherry-crowned mangabeys, slender-snouted crocodiles, African gray parrots and several West African freshwater fish species – all classified as threatened or endangered.