Fota Wildlife Park

Fota Wildlife Park, part of the Zoological Society of Ireland, is located on 100 acres at Fota Island 10km east of Cork City, and has an annual attendance of approximately 460,000 visitors. It is currently the second-largest visitor attraction in Ireland outside of Leinster. Fota Wildlife Park’s vision is to inspire people to understand and conserve the biodiversity of our natural world. The Park’s core values of conservation, education, and research have ensured that we are uniquely placed to foster greater public understanding of the threats to plant and animal habitats and decreasing global biodiversity. Fota Wildlife Park has made considerable investments in the past 10 years upgrading its infrastructure including an indoor Giraffe viewing area, the Madagascan Village, and the Asian Sanctuary which opened in 2015 and features Asian lions, Sumatran tigers, and Indian Rhinos.

Fota is a non-profit organization, limited by guarantee, and is also a registered charity. It is completely self-financing, relying entirely on gate receipts, membership fees, and gift shop income for its funding. Fota Wildlife Park reinvests any surplus generated yearly into capital projects and infrastructural improvements – such as flood defenses and building state-of-the-art habitats for its animals.

Fota Wildlife Park also financially supports and donates vital resources to conservation projects in Ireland and abroad, such as the Irish Ladybird Research Project, the Natterjack Toad Head Starter program which returned 2600 toads to the wild in 2020, the European Life-funded Corncrake project, the Madagascan Pochard, and in Vietnam, the Tonkin Snub-nosed monkey and the Western black crested gibbon conservation – to name a few.

Fota Wildlife Park cares for several different animal species in danger of extinction. Through long-established Breeding programmes, which are run cooperatively with other institutions around the world, the Park is helping restore populations of some species while protecting the very survival of others.

Conservation is something everyone can contribute to by re-telling our animals’ stories and making as many people aware of just how critical our efforts here in Ireland and further afield are.

As part of this effort, the Park is actively seeking to reduce its carbon footprint and introduced three Green Zones areas in order to promote and demonstrate sustainable recycling practices to visitors in June 2012.