'The Park and its Penguins - the first 50 years'. Chris Green

Registering for this event is appreciated to enable us to manage the seating arrangements.

Bird Keeper Chris Green will take you through a history of Cotswold Wildlife Park which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2020. The Park was the remarkable brainchild of one man, John Heyworth, who in 1969, transformed the bramble-strewn wilderness of Bradwell Grove Estate into a wildlife park visited, loved and appreciated by millions of visitors since it officially opened on 27th March 1970. Back then, the Park was home to 341 animals from all over the world. It is now one of the largest zoological collections in the UK, with over 1,500 animals from 250 different species, set in 160 acres of beautiful parkland with plenty of space to enjoy nature.

Chris will share the extraordinary stories from the Park's archive, including the history of the Park's Penguins - one of his particular favourites and a species he has closely worked with during his fourteen years at the Park.

Chris started working on the Bird Section at Cotswold Wildlife Park in 2007 and is extremely popular with both visitors and staff, not to mention the Penguins. He started keeping birds at the age of nine and is now the chairman of the Oxford Cage Bird Society.

He is the European studbook holder of the Mount Omei Shan Liocichla (currently classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN* Red List of Threatened Species) and has helped hand-rear several species at the Park including; White Spotted Laughing Thrush, Scarlet Ibis, Guira Cuckoos, White Browed Coucals, Lady Ross Turaco and Humboldt Penguins.