Drusillas Reveals Biggest Ever Zoo Investment: A £500k Bespoke Monkey Habitat

Drusillas Park’s most ambitious zoo project to date is now open: a half a million-pound, bespoke, conservation-themed habitat for the zoo’s colobus monkeys.

Custom designed and built for the lively troop, the space represents Drusillas’ largest investment to date in animal habitats. The new area, they say, provides a 'naturalistic, enriching' home for the colobus, alongside promoting conservation and responsible eco-tourism.

After a year of planning, work began on the project in September 2023 on the site of the former wallaby and agouti habitats. Since then, the team at the park, along with specially selected industry experts, have been busy behind the blue hoarding, battling against the elements to create the space.

Despite the great British weather doing its best to de-rail everyone’s hard work, the habitat was completed on time and the colobus troop were able to make their move last week. Keepers were delighted with how well the monkey group settled and made themselves at home. This allowed the new development to open to the public, giving half-term visitors their first look at the new animal habitat.

The team at Drusillas say that every aspect of the new colobus home has been carefully researched and considered, with a strong focus on best practice in animal welfare. It offers the animals a wide variety of choice and activities, and an experience as close to their natural environment as possible. To help create a stimulating environment there are both custom built enrichment features to encourage natural foraging behaviour, and bespoke branch climbing structures, for the lively primates to swing, hang, rest, and play on.

The warm bank holiday weekend found the colobus exploring the waterfall feature to the rear of the habitat, where they enjoyed splashing and cooling off.  Running water has several benefits for animals including bathing, drinking, and playing, as well as the humidity it offers, and a ‘white noise’ soothing effect that helps animals feel calm and relaxed.

Visitors will also spot a bespoke, hand-carved rockwork terrace in the new habitat, which offers the cheeky monkey gang endless nooks and crannies for climbing, resting, and hiding. There is even a custom-built heated tree offering the monkeys another place to keep cosy and comfortable when the colder weather hits. Plus, a hand painted mural, to add interest and colour and increase the lush, green, ‘jungle’ feel of the new development.

Tree top viewing platforms offer visitors to the park unparalleled opportunities to observe the colobus and provide a unique insight into the behaviour and habits of the troop of eight. Drusillas has also installed CCTV in all areas of the habitat to monitor behaviour such as feeding and breeding, to facilitate the zoo’s research and conservation work with other zoos and zoo associations around the world.

It also incorporates a series of jungle-style themed huts, currently being built along the perimeter of the space. The huts are intended to resemble kiosks in the colobus native country Africa, where locals sell goods before tourists are taken on eco tours. As well as providing an additional source of enrichment for the monkeys to explore and investigate, the huts have been included in the habitat design to promote responsible ecotourism.

The focus on ecotourism was important to Drusillas due to their new partnership with Colobus Conservation, who provide eco-tours to visitors and locals to support the Angloan Colobus monkeys in the Diani region. Established in 1997, the charity was created in response to the high number of deaths of colobus monkeys on the Diani Beach road. Over the last 25 years, Colobus Conservation have done some incredible work promoting the conservation, preservation, and protection of Colobus monkeys and their coastal forest habitat. 

Drusillas hope is that alongside creating a wonderful new environment for the colobus monkeys to live in, they can also raise funds and increase awareness about the essential work charities do to help conserve wildlife. They also hope to provide human resources out in Kenya, so the zoo’s keepers get the chance to see Colobus Conservation's amazing work in person.