The zoo of Nyíregyháza wins ’Europe’s best zoo’ award in its category

The zoo of Nyíregyháza, in draw with two Danish zoos, finished in first place in the ‘under five thousand visitors’ category according to the survey of an independent zoo analytical organisation.

Anthony Sheridan’s professional zoo foundation looked at a 100 European zoos divided into three categories by the number of visitors. “The zoo of Nyíregyháza finished in first place along with the zoo of Aalborg and Odensee in the category counting between 250 thousand and 500 thousand visitors.” said Mayor Ferenc Kovács and László Gajdos, the director of the zoo, at their press conference last Wednesday.

Mti.hu writes that in the same category, the zoo of Szeged finished in the 26th place, while the zoo of Veszprém in the 33rd place. In the highest category (zoos with more than a million visitors) Vienna was the absolute winner, while the Budapest Zoo took the 14th place.

“Getting into the rating system is a big achievement in itself” said László Gajdos. He added that the zoos were inspected in many different aspects like the educational, financial, marketing work of the zoos and how much effort they put into conserving races. The zoo of Nyíregyháza is rich with a selection of rare animals, which was another important aspect. The judges also checked the number of visitors, which is again, satisfying. The zoo counts 250 thousand Hungarian and 180-200 thousand foreign visitors, mostly from Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania.

The good result was a surprise because our zoo came before historic zoos like the ones in Salzburg or Plzen.

“The zoo couldn’t have reached a better result. This qualifies the efforts of the people working there.” said the Mayor of Nyíregyháza.

Translated by Alexandra Béni

Photo: https://www.facebook.com/sostozoo

Source: mti.hu