Hungarian zoo becomes the best in Europe

SóstóZoo, the zoo of Nyíregyháza, became the best European Zoo from 44 contestants in the 250-500 thousand visitors/year category.

Anthony Sheridan, the independent zoo expert, evaluated 126 parks of 29 European countries according to forty criteria which resulted in the triumph of the Nyíregyháza-based zoo again, reports Szabolcs Online. The awards night took place in the conference room of the famous Hotel Pangea.

“We have more than five thousand animals of five hundred species, many of them so rare that another zoo can neither keep, nor breed them. For example, an African elephant was born in spring and an Indian rhinoceros in autumn, mainly thanks to the expertise of our employees, which draws attention to the park. They write about the zoo in America and Asia as well, not just in zoological journals”

– commented László Gajdos director. He also said that the zoo is having its best year so far as they will pass 530 thousand visitors this year, meaning SóstóZoo is to become the leading tourist attraction in Hungary. We already wrote about the baby boom in Hungarian zoos. Read more here.

“It’s always nice to see Anthony because his arrival means acknowledgements are on their way as well – we hope he keeps this tradition in the future. The award we won in 2015 made not only us hopeful, but the local government as well, since the developments have started then. We worked hard to make SóstóZoo the best park not only then, but every year. I think we managed to improve since then, and this will remain our main purpose going forward”

– said Dr Ferenc Kovács, the mayor of Nyíregyháza. He added that the zoo hopefully would not win this category anymore as the number of visitors will exceed half a million people annually. The mayor thinks this will be certainly accomplished with the help of the new ice age exhibition.

Photo: MTI

Anthony Sheridan was here for the tenth time, and he was amazed that the park even improved since his last visit. The zoo provides something new every year to its visitors, and it overtook zoo parks like the ones in Magdeburg, Krefeld, Busselango and Danish parks which have already won the award. He said they gave extra points during the evaluation because the park presented new, rare animal species, provided high-quality education, supported different programs and made improvements, namely the new main entrance and hotel.

The zoo received a glass trophy for the win which is a wandering trophy at the same time. It depicts an antelope, but if one carefully examines it, then they can notice that the maker hid the shape of a polar bear in the trophy.

Featured Image: facebook.com/sostozoo/

Source: szon.hu