The Barcelona Zoo, immersed in an eternal process of redefinition, has closed 2023 with record numbers. A total of 818,288 people visited the park in the last 12 months, the highest record in the last six years. The Barcelona zoo has experienced a 10% growth in the number of visitors compared to 2022. The statistics for 2023 are also much better than those of 2019, the last year before the pandemic. Then the influx of people to the Ciutadella park area was 710,000. The zoo's audience continues to be family-oriented. This is demonstrated by the figures of the Zoo Club, which has reached 23,367 families and more than 78,000 members, 60% more than before the pandemic.
One of the zoo's newest proposals, the Espai Invertebrats, which opened in the summer of 2022, attracted more than 200,000 visitors in 2023. New activities such as the theatrical show Els follets del zoo also achieved notable success with the public. In total, the open and free activities that the Barcelona Zoo programmed throughout last year had 31,300 participants.
For the first deputy mayor and president of the Barcelona Zoo Foundation, Laia Bonet, “the zoo has had a very positive 2023 both in terms of projects and visitors.” “The growth that the park is experiencing in recent years – added the number two of the Barcelona City Council – is the result of the intense task of building loyalty and strengthening links with citizens that is being carried out, which is visualized in the great acceptance of the activities, aimed especially at family audiences.”
In line with consolidating its new model, the zoo has launched a new educational offer aimed at schools and institutes. The programming, launched this 2023-2024 academic year, includes seven participatory and experiential activities that seek to encourage students' reconnection with nature and influence their habits.
The Barcelona Zoo is specializing as a center for the preservation of threatened species. In 2023, the park collaborated in thirty conservation projects for endangered specimens and habitats. In addition, it has awarded eight scholarships to young researchers to develop projects focused mainly on the study of Mediterranean fauna and ecosystems.
In the field of conservation, it is worth highlighting the birth, for the first time in the Barcelona Zoo, of two babies of blue-throated macaws (Ara glaucogularis), a species from northern Bolivia in critical danger of extinction, and of a vulture fawn (Gyps fulvus). Projects have also been continued for the reintroduction into nature of native species, such as the creek turtle (Mauremys leprosa), the Mediterranean turtle (Testudo hermanni), the Montseny newt (Calotriton arnoldi), the fartet (Aphanius Iberus) , the Balearic toad (Alytes muletensis), the European polecat (Mustela putorius) and the hermit ibis (Geronticus eremita).
