The 2025 Standards of Modern Zoo Practice: A Leadership Guide to Digital Compliance and Visitor Impact

Why the 2025 Standards matter to the board, not just the keepers

In May 2025 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, working with the Scottish and Welsh Governments, published the Standards of Modern Zoo Practice for Great Britain. The Standards are specified under section 8 of the Zoo Licensing Act 1981 and set out what licence holders are expected to meet in the management of their zoo and the animals in it. They are the document local authority inspectors and appointed zoo inspectors work from when a licence is granted, renewed or reviewed.

Most of the coverage so far has focused, quite rightly, on husbandry, enclosure design and hazardous animal categorisation. Those sections belong with curators and veterinary teams. But several parts of the Standards sit squarely with the leadership team, because they concern how the zoo communicates with the public, how it evidences its educational role, and how it manages people on site.

Those are the areas where the visitor experience and the licence condition meet, and where a well-run digital layer does real work. This guide walks through four of them.

Section 11: evidencing education, not just delivering it

Section 11 is short, and every standard in it is mandatory for all zoos regardless of size or type. Standard 11.1 requires an education programme covering the living collection, the conservation of biodiversity, and encouraging positive behavioural change for conservation and sustainability. Most collections already do this well.

The harder requirements are the ones about proof. Standard 11.2 requires a written education strategy that demonstrates how the zoo will deliver, monitor and evaluate its programme. Standard 11.3 requires a named member of staff responsible for delivery and for formulating, monitoring and evaluating it. Standard 11.6 goes further again: zoos must keep a record of educational activities and evaluate their effectiveness by collecting evidence, with a documented annual review demonstrating the impact of the programme.

Ask most heads of education how they currently evidence impact for general day visitors, rather than for booked school groups, and the answer involves paper feedback forms and a volunteer with a clipboard. Booked sessions are usually well documented. The other ninety per cent of the gate is far harder to describe in an annual review.

This is where digital interpretation changes the paperwork as much as the experience. A conservation trail completed in an app, a short quiz at the end of a keeper talk, or a two question prompt sent after the visit produces something a clipboard cannot: a consistent, dated record of how many visitors engaged, with what content, and what they took from it. That record is straightforward to summarise for an annual review and straightforward to show an inspector.

• Completion rates for trails and self-guided routes, by month and by audience type.
• Which species stories and conservation messages are actually being read, watched or listened to.
• Post-visit responses on what visitors learned and what they intend to do differently.
• A year on year comparison that makes the annual review a short exercise rather than a scramble.

Standard 11.4 and 11.7: interpretation that is accessible and accurate

Standard 11.4 requires the education programme, including methods of interpretation such as signage, graphics, interactive displays and presentations, to be inclusive and accessible for a range of ages and abilities. A single panel of text at a fixed height, in one language, at one reading level, does not stretch very far against that wording.

Digital interpretation is not a replacement for good physical signage, and it should not be sold as one. What it does is add the layers a physical panel cannot carry: audio for visitors who cannot easily read the board, a simpler version for younger children alongside a fuller one for adults, translation for international visitors, and captioned video from the keepers who work with the animals every day.

Keeping enclosure information correct

Standard 11.7 sets out what must appear on each animal enclosure as a minimum: the scientific and common species name, its natural habitat and distribution, examples of its biological characteristics, its conservation status on the IUCN Red List including where a species has not been evaluated, an image where that aids identification, and clear identification of any species of special concern with comment on its potential invasiveness.

That is a lot of detail to hold accurate across a whole collection. Red List assessments are revised, taxonomy changes, and animals move. Every change to a physical sign carries a design cost, a production cost and a lead time, which is why so many collections carry boards that are quietly out of date. Holding the same information digitally means a curator can correct a status in minutes, and the version the visitor sees at the enclosure is always the current one.

Standard 9.11: managing visitors around the animals

Section 9 governs animal experiences and contact areas, and much of it is a matter for the ethical review process. One standard, though, is an operational and commercial question as much as a welfare one. Standard 9.11 states that visitor numbers and behaviour within and around animal enclosures must be controlled to avoid any negative impact on animal welfare, and that where the public are allowed into enclosures there must be a documented procedure for managing them.

Crowding around a sensitive habitat rarely happens evenly through the day. It happens in the twenty minutes around a feed, on the first warm Saturday of the season, or when rain pushes everybody into the same indoor house at once. Duty managers know where their pinch points are, but they usually find out that one has formed by walking past it.

Live visibility of where people are gathering, and how long they are staying, turns that into something a team can act on while it still matters. It also gives the zoo a gentle way to intervene. Timetable reminders, a suggested alternative route, or a prompt about a quieter talk starting nearby will move a proportion of a crowd without anyone needing to ask visitors to leave an area. The same records support the documented procedure the standard asks for.

Section 8 and Section 10: telling visitors quickly, and funding the mission

Section 8 covers public safety and escapes, and includes detailed requirements on escape procedures, drills, hazardous animal management and signage. Standard 8.58 asks for symbol based safety and hazard signs wherever practicable, specifically so that risk is communicated to visitors whose first language is not English and to children.

The Standards do not require a digital channel, and nothing here replaces a tested emergency procedure, trained staff and a public address system. What a direct channel to visitors adds is speed and precision on the ordinary days: a path closed for tree work, a house shut for a veterinary procedure, a drive-through reserve held while a vehicle is recovered. Telling people calmly and immediately, in their own language, is a better experience and a safer site.

Section 10 requires zoos to contribute to conservation and research and to record that work, with an Annual Conservation Summary demonstrating how the conservation measures required under the Act are being met. Most collections have more to say here than their visitors ever hear. Attaching a field project to the animal a family is standing in front of, and making it possible to give to that project there and then, does two things at once: it strengthens the educational message the Standards ask for, and it raises money for the work the summary describes.

Where to start

None of this turns a compliance document into a technology brief, and it should not. The Standards exist to protect animal welfare and public safety, and the bulk of the work sits with curatorial, veterinary and operations teams.

But if your next inspection is on the horizon and the education annual review is the part your team is least comfortable with, it is worth asking a simple question before you commission new signage or another survey round. Where is the evidence going to come from, who is going to collect it, and will it still be accurate a year from now?

For a lot of collections the honest answer is that the current approach produces a thin sample at considerable effort. That is the gap worth closing first.