Dr Ken Hughey: Orana Wildlife Trust Board co-chair on financial woes

Beloved museums and zoos in New Zealand, like Wellington Zoo, Orana Wildlife Park, and MOTAT, are struggling to keep the lights on.

Orana Wildlife Trust Board co-chair Dr Ken Hughey joined Andrew Dickens to discuss the financial difficulties facing them and other similar attractions. 

The financial struggles are not contributed to visitor numbers, which Hughey says are increasing, but instead the operating costs.

"The difficulty with the model that pretty much all of the large zoos, and there are other entities like that as well... is that they're becoming more and more expensive to run."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, we've got troubles at a zoo. And the zoo
is Orana Wildlife Park. And it's been a fixture for
nearly 50 years. But they just can't make the money.
There's a warning it will run out of cash reserves
in about six months. Now, look, they're not alone. MOTAT,
the museum in Auckland, is also desperately needing $ 16 million.
There's something about museums and zoos that they haven't been
making money lately. So I'm joined now by Orana Park's

(00:22):
Trust Board co-chair. It's afternoon to Dr. Ken Hooey. Hello, Ken.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, hi, Andrew. Great to be on the show.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
How much do you need?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
In the immediate short term this financial year, around $ 4 million.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
If you don't get it, when do you close?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
We're going to get it, so we're not talking closure.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Okay. How many lions have you got?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, at the moment, we've got three or four lines.
They're getting quite old. We're looking at getting new ones. And,
you know, once we've secured this finance for the current
financial year and looking at the model that you've just
talked about going forward, then we will secure new lines. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
But the market is saying, we don't care about your lines.
We don't want to come. And they're saying the same
thing to Motet. There seems to be a move away
from this when everything's online. So what is the problem
with zoos? Wellington Zoo has the same problem. What is
the problem about attracting paying customers?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
The funny thing is, Andrew, we can actually attract paying customers.
So our visitation grew in the last financial year substantially.
That's a really good thing. And we see that probably
increasing going forward as we build new attractions and the like.
The difficulty with the model that pretty much all of
the large zoos, and there are other entities like that

(01:39):
as well that you describe, is that they're becoming more
and more expensive to run on. I'll just give you
a couple of quick examples. So in order for us
to sustain our accreditation, and we have to do that
to have the animals, For animal welfare reasons and staff
safety reasons, we've had to add seven new trained animal staff.

(02:02):
We've had to add two new vet nurses. And on
top of that, electricity's gone up, as you know, fuel
prices have gone up. All of these things just keep
going up and they've added to the point where even
though we're increasing visitor numbers, under the current model, we
cannot fund that deficit. So we need to have a
new model. Some of the zoos already have it. Wellington,

(02:23):
Auckland and Hamilton are either part owned or owned or
controlled by their councils. We're standalone. The model just isn't working.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
All right, well, look, I wish you the best of luck.
If somebody wants to donate, have you got a website?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, we've got a Rana Park website and we've got
a Give-A-Little website that went open today. And we're looking
for small Give-A-Littles and as big as you like.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Good stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Dr.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Ken Huey from Rana Park.