Polar bears also want privacy. Explain this to the visitor

Van Leon van Huisstede (60) did not want it. Just before his fixed hangout, on the edge of downtown Emmen, Wildlands Adventure Zoo, the successor of Emmen Zoo, crowned the new center two years ago. The colossal and domed entrance shines in the heat of summer.

Van Huisstede loves animals. At the old animal park, with its oaks and its location in the heart of Emmen, it has been used for years as a guardian. Wash the elephants, feed the crocodiles. "Kind of like looking after the elderly," he says. If you were in Emmen during these days, you would walk along panthers or baboons during your lunch break. As far as he is concerned, the money from the move could have been better invested in the renovation of this park.

When the new park opened the doors, Van Huisstede stayed away. What should he look for? "If you're crazy about your wife, do not you take another?"

The old Animal Park has more points: Only the sexy animals were allowed to participate

For management, the move in 2016 was an opportunity: an entirely new park in a pasture fallow. No building on the road or the past to hang out. Wildlands wanted to do everything differently. No zoo, but something spectacular.

Music rings walls to strengthen the environment, a safari truck rushes past the giraffes and the ruins of butterflies in the jungle are based on Cambodian temples. In the polar region, there is a 4D cinema that mimics a research trip and behind rhinoceroses and wild asses (desert donkeys) in the desert, a man drumming rhythmically on a djembe and pursuing a roller coaster in a mining landscape.

what we are, "says marketing director Hans Poppelaars. A "theme park with animals and attractions" is getting closer. It is there that begin the problems, because who has heard about it? Poppelaars was appointed in April to change that. His girlfriend comes from Emmen, the post pleased him. "You are really in a shrinking region … Fascinating, for a buyer."

Poppelaars – boomlang, with a trimmed beard and a Brabant accent – has gained experience in professional football. In Wildlands, he says, his work is no different from NAC and PSV. How to let people pay 30 euros for an experience, can they also sit at home in front of the television? You have to attract them – not at a stadium at the corner of the street, no, but in a remote corner of Drenthe. "They think: gas on, we jump to Emmen."

Also read NRC's review of The New Artis : How do you close 2018 animals?

There is a second, more existential dilemma for the modern animal park. Is wildlife locking and learning from homo sapiens still possible? The desire to be face to face with the animal kingdom is at odds with the increasing attention to the well-being of all the inhabitants of the planet. Circus Renz was already on the bottle, you never know if the zoos will turn.

Wildlands thought he had found the right formula: not the animal, but the experience is central. Pets Allowed, CO ₂ – Neutral, with spacious rooms and attractions and entertainment. The new park occupies twice as much space as the old, with fewer animals. Poppelaars: "No place to tick animals."

Revolution in the world of zoo

The bridge is broken, says the driver of the safari, so he has to maneuver his truck through a stream. The occupants eagerly photograph the splashing water. That's what they imagined.

Forward – this is how the old animal park also caused an uproar. The couple Jaap and Aleid Rensen, who took over his father's zoo in 1970, gave the Emmenaren a park they can be proud of. The architect Jaap had giraffes and zebras grazing side by side in the savannah – a revolution in the zoo world. Aleid became a welcome guest on television with Willem Duys, with the Hannes chimpanzee, the ostrich Secundus and a whole host of other animals by his side. The Netherlands sank in 1993, 1.7 million visitors have passed through the gates. Emmen was on the map.

Wildlands still dreams of national fame and local pride. The stone entrance place is today a dead plain. The number of visitors is disappointing. A loss is made. The 1.3 million visits of the opening year were just under a million in 2017. This year there is a further decline.

Apart from Artis and Blijdorp, no Dutch zoo receives 1.3 million. Yet this remains the goal: after all investments, it is a necessity. With a little less things can also turn, says Poppelaars, but then you can not fumble at the price of entry.

At the town hall, the hands are wrung out. The stakes are high, for the tourist board – Wildlands proclaimed this one "Big Five of Emmen" – and for the municipality itself. This made the zoo part of the master plan for urban renewal and bought the grounds of the old park for 65 million euros. A few tens of millions of euros have been invested in the new park with grants from the province and the government.

Relocation is also sensitive to Emmen residents. A clean zoo is nostalgia, especially here; jog and you get the wind from the front. Marketing director Poppelaars quickly remarked, "At first the word zoo was avoided with a lot of jealousy, it does not go well with the Emmen people who were so proud of their park."

L & # 39; The soul of this story is embodied by Jaap Rensen. The former director is now eighty-eight (Aleid died in 2016). The occupants of the animals moved – the majority to Wildlands, the rest elsewhere – but he still lives in the director's house behind the old houses.

The old park, lovingly renamed Rensenpark, was finally "neglected", "He finds that too.He has always been innovative with his wife.And that's exactly what's missing after the move. He prefers management, but where is the education, where are the exhibits and museums that have distinguished the animal park? "It has become a theme park," he says, "and I am have less. "

Evidence of the future

The plans have divided the population of Emmen for years.For the resident Jisse Otter it was the reason he entered into He became a council member and is now a councilman for Wakker Emmen. "Wildlands is one of his files." It was really our park, "he says, sitting in front of the old entrance. And that is the park, "he says in the other way," not yet. "

Opposition to the animal park made Wakker Emmen gran d: Revolt in the peat

But now that Wildlands is there once, says the alderman, Emmen can only do his best. He sees Internet critics improving journals, though he sometimes comes across a nostalgic note: can not everything just go back to how it was? "Yes, hállo," he thinks, "the old park also had to keep the municipality in the legs with millions in recent years."

It's not easy either, says Otter: rivaling the price war. Against festivals and events that are organized from time to time. And against the competition of a day at IKEA or Primark in Groningen. "But then you have to plan your business case ."

Information boards were added and a day for visitors to the area. A charm offensive was necessary, Poppelaars said. "If you look at animal welfare, we are very much ahead of the future, but we are a bit too ahead of the market." Perhaps, he adds later, the animal is still central.

Difficult because "animal friendly" is not always human. The visitor comes to see polar bears, closely and preferably in action. But the polar bear, Poppelaars knows, is sometimes shy. Then he would prefer to return to the corners of the private life that were built in the new residence. "Do you brick those corners?" We do not want it either. "