People Helping Nature Podcast · Conservation Amplified

Inside Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo: How Modern Zoos Actually Work (EP34 with Karen Fifield)

·1 hr 10 min·4 clips

Karen says Wellington Zoo’s Whittaker skinks are extinct in the wild and managed in individual habitats.

1. People Helping Nature Podcast focuses on Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo and Karen Fifield’s view of modern zoo work. 2. Karen Fifield is Chief Executive at Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo, with previous zoo roles in Sydney and Melbourne. 3. The episode asks what zoos are for now, after their shift away from “living museum” history. 4. Karen says the first public zoo emerged in the 1700s and changed after the French Revolution opened the king’s menagerie to Paris. 5. She contrasts old collector-style zoos with progressive zoos that support conservation, welfare, and behaviour change. 6. Karen says animals are sentient and individual, and she links that view to Jane Goodall’s resistance to numbering chimpanzees only. 7. She describes Wellington Zoo’s Animal and Wildlife Hospital, Te Kōhanga, as a transparent space inside the visitor area. 8. Karen says the team debated whether postmortems should be on visitor view and chose to include people in the narrative where possible. 9. She says the hospital’s caseload is 70% wildlife and 30% animals in the zoo’s care. 10. Karen uses albatrosses and kākāpō as examples of wildlife visitors may see up close for the first time. 11. She explains that Whittaker skinks are managed in Te Piringa Eati because they need a climate-controlled, scientific environment. 12. Karen says the zoo holds about 50 to 60 Whittaker skinks, and the species is extinct in the wild. 13. She describes ZIMS, the Zoo Information Management System, as the software used to manage genetics and pairings. 14. Karen says the skinks are kept in individual habitats because they can be highly aggressive and kill each other. 15. She gives Wellington green geckos as another restoration target, with the aim of seeing them back in city backyards. 16. Karen says Wellington Zoo allocates local conservation grants of about $16,000 to $20,000 a year for predator control, bats, and other projects. 17. She describes a founding partnership with Fauna and Flora on white-cheeked gibbons in a national park in Vietnam. 18. Karen explains the “one plan approach” and says field work helps staff connect ex situ and in situ conservation. 19. The tone is practical, reflective, and interview-based, with examples moving from zoo design to field conservation. 20. People interested in zoo conservation, wildlife care, and community-led species recovery will get the most from it.

As heard by us

A calm, practical look at how a modern zoo balances animal care, staff, visitors, and conservation.

Karen Fifield frames Wellington Zoo through a simple but sturdy idea: the animals, the staff, and the visitors all matter, and each one shapes the others. That keeps the conversation grounded.

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Why you'd press play

You want the logic behind a modern zoo, not just the animals.

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