The boss of Britain’s ‘worst zoo’ promised improvements when taking over from a Stetson-wearing, Ferrari-driving millionaire and his former beauty queen wife – but has now been forced to close it.
Karen Brewer assumed control of South Lakes Safari Zoo in 2017 after previous owner David Gill lost his licence following a series of tragedies and controversies – including a young zookeeper being killed by a tiger.
Mr Gill first opened the 51-acre attraction in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria in 1994.
Campaigners have long been raising concerns about operations there, including animals run over by a miniature train or electrocuted by fencing.
And the zoo was fined £255,000 after Sarah McClay, 24, was mauled to death by a Sumatran tiger during Mr Gill’s time in charge.
Ms Brewer vowed a turnaround when she assumed control and even allowed BBC cameras in to shoot a ‘warts and all’ documentary, Trouble At The Zoo, which aired in February 2018.
She said at the time: ‘We wanted to show that working with animals and running a complex business is emotional and is difficult and I felt the programme did capture that, and that we’re all human.’
Yet as recently as October this year, disturbing photographs were revealed showing dead and injured animals – and it has now been announced by owners Cumbria Zoo Company that the zoo will close on December 31.
Under the previous ownership of Mr Gill, the zoo was fined £255,000 at Preston Crown Court in June 2016 for health and safety failings related to Ms McClay’s death in May 2013.
It received an additional £42,500 fine after it also pleaded guilty to other health and safety law breaches when a zoo keeper fell from a ladder while preparing to feed big cats in July 2014.
The zoo had officially opened in May 1994 after farmland in Dalton-in-Furness was bought by stetson-wearing Mr Gill.
He has been no stranger to drama and controversy since – including cheating on his first wife with a teenage zookeeper he later married, almost being killed by the jealous husband of a married conquest, and taken to a tribunal after allegedly telling another zoo employee to terminate her pregnancy.
In 1997, three years after South Lakes Safari Zoo opened, Mr Gill – who was married for 12 years to his first wife Alison, with whom he has two children, had an affair with his 17-year-old kangaroo keeper, Shelley Goodwin.
He was quoted at the time as saying: ‘It doesn’t matter that I’m having a relationship with a young girl. That’s what I want to do.
‘My relationship with Alison broke down before I employed Shelley. I know it’s not conventional, but I’ve never lived life by the rules.’
In 2000, Mr Gill married Shelley, but by 2003 he was living with a woman called Caroline, with whom he had two more children.
In 2008, the zoo owner was stabbed by a jilted husband when he discovered Mr Gill and his wife were having an affair.
Former rugby league player Richard Creary, 38, slashed at Mr Gill’s neck after he and Alison Creary were caught in bed together.
He escaped from the ordeal in his pyjama bottoms and Creary was jailed for five years after being initially arrested for suspected attempted murder, but later admitting the lesser charge of aggravated burglary with intent to cause actual bodily harm
In another controversy, 39-year-old Lara Grant, from Barrow-in-Furness, had won a claim for sexual discrimination against the zoo in 2001.
The former Lara Kitson, then 23 and pregnant, was awarded £30,000 by a tribunal in Carlisle after Gill was found to have ordered her to climb a 16ft pole to feed the lions.
Lara said that when she raised concerns it would put her unborn baby at risk, Mr Gill told her to think about whether to proceed with the pregnancy.
Meanwhile, in 1997, a three-tonne white rhino escaped its pen and was shot dead by Mr Gill, who was fined £10,000 for failing to keep animal enclosed.
The park was criticised again in 2006 after lemurs escape an enclosure and two years later fire destroyed three wooden huts housing lemurs, killing 31, with the blaze believed to have been started by a faulty heater.
Mr Gill later married former Peruvian beauty queen Frieda Rivera-Schreiber and she became the zoo’s director of veterinary services shortly after their wedding at an elaborate beachside setting in Peru in 2014.
She is the granddaughter of a Peruvian ambassador to Tokyo, with a socialite mother also called Frieda and a fellow former beauty queen.
Cumbria Council removed Mr Gill’s licence in 2016 though Ms Brewer’s firm was granted permission to run the zoo in May the following year.
The death toll also included a jaguar that chewed off its own paw, a rhino crushed to death by its partner and a giraffe shot after collapsing.
Barrow Council lambasted its ‘deplorable’ standards of welfare and lack of veterinary care.
Ms Brewer’s time as director began after Mr Gill’s zoo, which at its peak hosted 250,000 visitors a year, was issued with a closure order in 2016.
An inspection found 486 animals died there between December 2013 and September 2016, including two leopards partially eaten by other animals, a monkey found behind a radiator and seven healthy lion clubs destroyed due to lack of space.
Yet standards have still caused alarm despite Mr Gill no longer being involved, according to an undercover visit by experts from charity Born Free in 2022.
They raised concerns including monkeys clinging to the edge of their enclosures to get close to heat lamps, rhinos confined to tiny stalls barely able to turn around and an Andean bear seen swaying and testing an electric fence with its paw.
The harrowing latest photos from October included ones showing a capybara covered in cuts reportedly caused by fighting and a zebra with its hoof stuck in the bars of its enclosure and which later had to be put down.
It follows an alarming inspection report in July which found ’major causes for concern’, including a work experience student being left alone with dangerous animals.
Wildlife groups have welcomed news of the imminent closure, though also raised concerns about the prospect of some of the zoo’s animals being transferred to a different park run by the same company.
Ms Brewer, CEO of Cumbria Zoo Company Ltd, insists the attraction met all regulatory requirements – but this week said the firm was now looking to focus on a 120-acre site 40 miles away in Tebay, which it will run as a nature and wildlife park.
She said in a statement: ‘In transition, the animals will all continue to be looked after and given the best veterinary care.
‘We are working with various agencies, including two zoo consultants, to find them all new homes that are appropriate for their longer-term needs.’
Chris Lewis, captivity research and policy manager at Born Free which has been campaigning for the zoo’s closure, has said of the new closure announcement: ‘While we are pleased to see today’s announcement, exact details on the future of the animals and the site itself remain unclear.
‘Born Free urges all parties to work together to ensure the welfare of the animals remains paramount until a time when appropriate and suitable homes can be secured for them.’
Recent one-star reviews on TripAdvisor, posted by visitors to the zoo, include comments such as ‘Place of despair’, ‘Tired zoo, misereable animals’ and ‘Awful, miserable, derelict and sad’.
One poster wrote: ‘I was absolutely heartbroken to see the big cats suffering and clearly distressed and kept in far from pleasant conditions.
‘Shocking – something should be done to either make their living conditions way better or have them rehomed in a place befitting of these beautiful animals.’